


Physicality: Continuing Education in Bondage

by shaenie



Series: Adapting to Physicality [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BDSM, Dom/sub, Impact Play, M/M, Multi, Needle play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:54:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: Set post main series, Bruce gets his day of bondage.





	

On Tuesday, Bruce wakes up because Tony is unbuckling his wrist restraints. Before Bruce can think to ask why, Tony kneels down toward the foot of the bed and unbuckles the ankle restraints, too. 

He sees Bruce blinking in owlish puzzlement at him, and laughs. “Time to get up, sleepyhead. It’s after ten.”

Bruce is genuinely shocked. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d slept so late straight through without waking.

“Breakfast is ready, but don’t get in any kind of hurry. I want to kit you out before we go out and eat,” Tony says.

“Kit me out?” Bruce asks. And then adds, “I have to go to the bathroom, Tony.”

“That’s very sad for you, Bruce,” Tony says, lips curling into a smirk. “Very sad. You can wait until I’ve kitted you out for that, too.”

Bruce blinks at that, but before he can ask what Tony means by kitting him out, Tony is untangling a mass of leather straps that slowly takes the shape of some kind of harness. “Get up on your knees,” Tony says, and Bruce, gaze fixed on the harness, does as he’s told.

The harness is made of thick leather straps that look to Bruce like they’ll fit over his shoulders, criss-crossed in either the back or the front, he can’t tell which it is by the way Tony is holding it, a chest or waist strap with a buckle, and one more set of wide straps that look like they go around the thighs. It also has several smaller straps dangling from it in places both where it criss-crosses, and down from the thigh straps. Built into it is what looks a lot like a cockring, which is what makes Bruce finally decide that the criss-crossed section goes in the back, because the part with the cockring built in comes straight down from the straps that go over the shoulders. He doesn’t know what all the smaller straps are for. There are two sets of cuffs that are clearly made to go with the harness sitting off to one side, and Tony starts with these.

“Give me your hands,” he says, and Bruce holds them out in front of him obediently. He’s already hard, and he has no idea what the harness is really for yet. Just seeing it is enough. Tony buckles the cuffs around his wrists. “Turn around for me, and get up on your knees,” Tony instructs. Bruce does, and Tony slides the straps of the harness over his shoulders, slips the cockring down, and unsnaps it, wrapping it around Bruce’s cock and balls before snapping it closed again. Bruce would like to point out that this is going to make going to the bathroom awkward, but decides not to. Tony tugs at the harness, unbuckling something behind Bruce that he can’t see, and then it loosens slightly around his shoulders and his lower back. The part that had criss-crossed, Bruce guesses. While Bruce is up on his knees, Tony slides the cuffs around his ankles and buckles them closed. Tony nudges him around with his hands on both of his shoulders, and buckles another strap across his chest, just below his nipples. “Stand up,” Tony directs, and Bruce slides down off the edge of the bed, aware of all the smaller straps hanging loose around him and brushing against his legs. Tony buckles the last of the bigger straps around his thighs, and then takes a step back, looking unmistakably pleased. “Just about the right size. A good thing that front and back straps are totally adjustable, or it would have probably been too small. Put your hands behind your back,” Tony says.

Bruce does, and Tony pulls his wrists up almost to the center of his back and does something with the straps to hook them there. It isn’t uncomfortable, but there is no give in it either. It sends and undeniable message that Bruce will not be using his hands while he’s wearing the harness. Bruce’s cock thinks this is a great idea, while Bruce’s thinking mind, which is in closer contact with his bladder, thinks it’s going to make things difficult.

“Bathroom?” Tony asks, sounding calm about it, as if it’s not a problem.

“Yes, but…” Bruce says.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tony says. “Stay on your feet. I don’t want any of the smaller straps to get tangled together.”

Bruce, puzzled and turned on and having to go to the bathroom even more badly now, lets Tony capture his elbow and lead him into the other room. He positions Bruce in front of the toilet, takes hold of his cock, and pulls it down until some of his hard on goes away from pure discomfort, though he’s still hard enough that it takes him a little while to manage to start the flow. He’s flushing hotly at this, and has no real idea why, when Tony seems so matter of fact about it. And Tony is weirdly patient about it, too, he just waits with Bruce’s cock in his hand for the two extremely long minutes it takes him to get soft enough to let go of his urine. “Good, Bruce,” Tony murmurs when Bruce finally manages it, and then strokes him immediately back to full erection again. It doesn’t take much, even though Bruce can’t stop blushing the whole time. “Scoot over,” Tony directs, and then takes a piss himself before he bothers to flush. “Want to take a look?” 

Bruce is already taking a look, actually. It’s mostly a standard harness, except for a few custom touches, like the strap across the chest and the thigh cuffs. He still isn’t sure what the smaller straps are for. But it’s also clearly high quality, likely made to order and stitched by hand. While Bruce is looking at himself, Tony leaves the room and comes back a minute later with a leash, which he clips onto the O ring attached to Bruce’s collar. He spends several long moments examining Bruce’s back and ass, probably for traces of the caning left over from Saturday, but Bruce is more or less clean. The backs of his thighs are still faintly marked, but the rest of him is pretty much all healed up.

“What is this all about, Tony?” Bruce asks, after Tony has stopped looking, and is just adjusting something at the back of the harness so that Bruce’s hands are sitting just a little lower, though still not so low that he could use them if he wanted to, not even for something as simple as bracing himself to sit down.

“It’s mostly about our mutual bondage fetish,” Tony says, and grins at Bruce from over his shoulder. “I told you that one day this week I’d keep you bound down all day, and this is how it starts. Are you hungry? Breakfast is ready.”

Bruce feels slow blood suffuse his face, and watches Tony watch him understand what the harness really means. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Tony has hand-fed him a few times, at least once in front of a good chunk of the team. But it’s different. Being unable to feed himself because he’s trussed up is different. Tony looks like he knows it, too.

“Are you hungry, Bruce?” Tony repeats, his eyes glittering a little, in a way that Bruce reads as the prelude to annoyance if Tony has to repeat himself a third time.

“Yes,” Bruce says, finally, and Tony nods.

“Let me hook these little straps onto something,” he says, and then goes to his knees and hooks them, one at a time, through loops set into the leather. Bruce can tell that this isn’t where they really go for bondage, but just to get them out of the way until they’re needed for bondage. Then Tony takes the leash in his right hand and leads him out of the bathroom. Bruce goes down to his knees, because he understands why Tony had bothered to get all the little straps out of the way. “As long as you’re in the harness, you’re on your knees. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce says, only a little unsteadily. Knee walking is a little slower than hands and knees, but Tony doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. He guides Bruce through the bedroom and out into the main penthouse, where everyone is gathered around the bar eating and talking until Bruce comes into view, at which point they stop to look at him. Tony walks him over to the bar and hands the leash to Phil, who has apparently taken the day off.

“Hold onto that for a minute for me?” he asks.

“Of course,” Phil says, his gaze frankly admiring on Bruce as he looks down at him.

“Did you have that made for him?” Natasha asks curiously, while Tony crosses the room to the sitting area and retrieves a large cushion from the couch.

“Not specifically, no, but I was pretty sure it would fit him. I haven’t actually used it in years, but it’s a specialty item, so I hung onto it just in case I needed it some day. And voila.” He drops the cushion onto the floor in front of one of the chairs, and reclaims the leash from Phil. He tugs Bruce gently forward with it until he’s on his knees on the cushion. Then he bends and unhooks some of the straps from some of the leather loops and hooks them to the cuffs around Bruce’s ankles instead, making it impossible for Bruce to stand up, or even to get all the way up to his knees, if he’s judging the length of them correctly. Bruce’s face heats again, which he keeps tipped down just so the rest of them won’t see.

“Blueberry waffles,” Tony tells him, either genuinely unaware of Bruce’s embarrassment, or willing to let Bruce get away with keeping his face averted until he gets himself under control. “Are you one of those heathens that puts maple syrup on blueberry waffles?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce admits, and after a moment is able to tip his face up and look around. Most of the team is leaning around the bar to get a look at him while Tony makes one or the other of them a plate of food. 

“Sausage?” Tony asks.

“Yes, please,” Bruce says.

“Eggs?”

“No, thank you,” Bruce answers.

“Clint, will you put the kettle on for Bruce?” Tony asks. Clint, uncharacteristically silent, gets up and does so.

Then Tony is leaning over Bruce with a plate in his hand and a bite of sausage already speared on his fork. Bruce eats it. He isn’t sure what else to do. He doesn’t really want the whole team watching Tony feed him, but he can’t really avoid it, and it’s obvious that Tony _does_ want the whole team to watch it, or at least doesn’t care if they watch one way or the other. After a couple of bites, though, they return their attention to their own food, and no one even asks Tony why he has Bruce in bondage so serious that he can’t even feed himself.

Steve made the waffles. Bruce can tell. Steve makes the best waffles out of all of them. After about half a waffle, the kettle starts to whistle, and Steve says, “I’ll get it,” and goes to the stove and sets about making Bruce a cup of tea. Bruce is more or less sure that Steve knows what he’s doing with a tea ball, so doesn’t let it concern him. He’s beginning to feel the edges of his subspace, like fingers smoothing at the edges of his mind. Steve brings his tea cup over and puts in on the bar next to Tony, but just stands there for several seconds, looking down at Bruce. Bruce thinks Steve might say something, have questions, but he just looks for a long couple of moments, looking the harness over from back to front, top to bottom, and then returns to his own seat.

Phil asks, “Do you like it?”

“I…” Steve says. “I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m conflicted.”

“Think about it a little. I can have something custom made for you along those lines, or I can show you other kinds of harnesses you might like better,” Phil says.

“I will,” Steve says, and Bruce can still feel Steve’s gaze on him from the next chair over, but he ignores it as Tony doles out bite sized portions of food, not hurrying at all, and not apparently worried about when he’s going to get to eat.

Bruce turns his face away, eventually, when he’s had all he wants, and Tony returns the plate to the table and begins to fill it again for himself. “Your tea is still going to need to cool for a bit,” Tony says, and Bruce nods in a dreamy kind of agreement or acknowledgement, he’s not sure which.

This is different from Tony hand-feeding him before, being bound and unable to do for himself, and Bruce finds his subspace more quickly and more easily than he has during any of the times they’ve done that.

He isn’t sure how much time passes before Tony puts the mug of tea to his lips and Bruce sips obediently at it, sweetened just barely and almost perfectly, so apparently Tony isn’t the only one who watches how Bruce makes his tea, which makes Bruce feel warm and happy all over. He sips several times until Tony puts the mug back on the table and goes back to eating his own breakfast, but all the usual banter has gone quiet, and he can feel all of them watching him. He isn’t sure if he’s supposed to do or say anything, so he doesn’t. He just sits and lets himself simmer in quiet subspace, his cock hard, but not particularly bothering him, his hands folded together up toward the middle of his back, also not bothering him. He’s stable on the cushion, so his cuffed ankles aren’t bothering him either.

Nothing is bothering him, not even the silence.

He continues to sip at his tea whenever Tony offers it to him, and just lets himself be quiet and still under the observation of the rest of the team.

Steve eventually says, “I think I’d be willing to try it,” and Bruce feels his lips curve up in the ghost of a smile, because he hasn’t forgotten what Tony had said to him about how Steve is going to respond to bondage.

“I know a guy,” Tony says. “I’ll get his information to you.”

“Thank you,” Phil says thoughtfully, and Bruce realizes that Phil is looking at him, and turns his head to look back. “This is just from the harness?” Phil asks. “You didn’t do anything to him before you came out of your room?”

“No, it’s just the harness,” Tony says.

Phil smiles at Bruce, so Bruce smiles back faintly, mostly just to acknowledge the smile having been aimed at him, and then turns back toward the long, lean line of Tony’s thigh that he’s been staring at since Tony had finished feeding him. Bruce is too low to the ground and Tony is too high up for Bruce to see if Tony is hard, if Tony had gotten off on it, or had just been willing to do it because he knew Bruce would get off on it somehow. He wants to know, but it doesn’t feel pressing. Nothing feels pressing.

Tony finishes eating, and takes their plate to the sink to rinse it off and slide it into the dishwasher, leaving Bruce’s leash in Clint’s hand this time when he gets up.

“Jesus,” Clint says, his tone half-awe and half-appreciation as he looks down at Bruce where he’s kneeling on the cushion. “He looks almost as far down as he looked after the caning. Did you know the harness was going to do this for him?”

“I suspected it might, combined with other factors, such as being on exhibition while he wears it,” Tony says. “Bruce likes to be looked at, don’t you, Bruce?”

Bruce’s face heats, but only a little, which only makes Tony’s theory more plausible. “Yes, Tony,” he says, stammering a little in embarrassment, but even that seems distant, unable to really intrude on his headspace.

“Tony,” Clint says, sounding a little pained. “Can I borrow him for a few hours. I promise to return him almost as good as new.”

Bruce feels himself stiffen a little at the question, but Tony calms him immediately. “No, we have plans today. Although.”

He bends and turns Bruce’s face up to capture his eyes, Tony’s own gaze thoughtful, and then he nods as though satisfied at what he sees there.

“I think I did promise you the chance to spank his ass once he was healed up from the caning,” Tony muses.

Clint’s hand tightens into a fist wrapped in Bruce’s leash, which makes Bruce sway slightly in his direction. “Don’t fuck with me if you don’t mean it,” he says, and sounds so intensely unlike himself that Bruce turns to look at him more closely, and sees the want there, more than there had been before, Bruce thinks, more than there had been when Clint had topped him a little bit when he, Steve, Bruce, and Tony had all gone to bed together. 

“I’m not fucking with you, Clint,” Tony says, his tone mild. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Clint’s expression eases a little and then folds into a slightly puzzled frown for an instant. “You aren’t going to ask him,” he says, and it’s not quite a question. “You’re not going to give him the chance to say no.”

“He isn’t going to say no,” Tony says. “Not like he is right now. I could let you do it right here bent over the bar if I wanted to, and he wouldn’t say no. I won’t, because later he would be embarrassed to remember being so… wanton, but he would let you. No, we’ll take it to my bedroom. I’ve got a zip line attached to the ceiling to keep his hands up, and you can give him the spanking of his life, if you think you’re up to it.”

Bruce says, with no idea that he means to say anything, “Clint has hard hands.”

“I know,” Tony says, and takes the leash from Clint’s clenched fist. “And before you ask, no, you can’t all come in and watch,” he adds. “Bruce probably wouldn’t mind the audience, but Clint probably would.”

“It’s not so much that I mind the audience,” Clint says, low and deep. “It’s just that I’d like the chance to have him all to myself, except for you, of course.”

“Isn’t that more or less what I just said,” Tony says, smiling. He bends and unhooks Bruces ankles from the cuffs around his thighs and hooks the dangling ends back into some of the leather loops that Bruce thinks are just there to keep them out of the way. At some point, Tony had spent quite a bit of time and money on this harness, had put a great deal of thought into it.

“Did you design it?” Bruce asks, again, unaware that he’s going to speak at all.

Tony seems to be following his line of thought easily enough, however. “I did. For myself, actually, but you’re not so much bigger than I am that with a little adjustments that it fits you quite nicely.”

Bruce spends a woozy moment on his knees, picturing Tony in the harness, and Tony rests a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “Coulson, I’ll text you that information on the leatherworker I went through. He does enough smaller scale work for me that I’ve kept in touch with him. If you buy something for Steve, you’ll want to have him fitted. Don’t worry about his discretion; just charge it to me, and he’ll add enough money onto the price to buy his own silence.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Phil says. “I can pay for it.”

“But he knows me, and he knows what I’ll do to him if he ever opens his mouth about a piece I ever commissioned him to make. And Steve isn’t exactly someone you can take to just a random harness maker and not expect it to end up in the news somehow. This way I’m sure it won’t, and for God’s sake, Coulson, if you think I won’t talk you into letting me play with him while he’s wearing it, you clearly don’t know me very well. Steve can’t be bought for off the rack, he has to be fitted, and I can make sure that happens with no risk of anyone getting wind of it. Let me.” The last two word are almost plaintive.

Phil glances at Steve for a moment, then back at Tony, and says, “I’ll owe you one. A favor of your choice.”

“Anything I want?” Tony asks, sounding interested now.

“I can’t think of anything I’d turn you down for, so yes, whatever you want,” Phil says, and Bruce sees that Phil is flushing faintly, just the tops of his cheeks very faintly pink, and wonders if Phil is setting himself up to sub for Tony, if he wants it.

“I’ll think about it,” Tony says, and then takes his phone out of his pocket and begins tapping rapidly on it. A few moments later, Phil’s phone beeps in his pocket, and Tony looks satisfied. “He’ll come to you. One of the benefits of being able to pay for all the extras. No need to take Steve out on the street and even take a chance that someone might see him going into a leatherworker’s shop.”

“How soon?” Phil asks. 

“Money talks. When do you have to be back to work at SHIELD. I mean, I know you technically sometimes work here, but how long can you stay away from HQ?” Tony asks.

“Another day at least,” Phil says.

“Call him today. He’ll fit you in either today or tomorrow. Usually I’d say it would take him about three or four days for him to make the harness, but as soon as he sees who he’s making it for, I’m betting you’ll get expedited service.” Tony smiles. “Who wouldn’t want to see Steve kitted out?”

No one in the kitchen apparently disagrees with that statement.

“Throw that cushion back onto the couch, Clint, and then come on,” he says. Clint practically throws himself out of his chair to follow Tony’s directions, and Bruce feels a little amusement sliding through his subspace at his alacrity. Clint is on their heels by the time they make it back to the bedroom, and, dressed in his customary breakfast wear of tight sweats, is showing off his hard on without seeming to care about it one way or the other.

“Close the door,” Tony says, and Clint does, and only then does he circle around Bruce to kneel in front of him and look him in the face.

“If this isn’t something you want, what Tony says aside, then it’s not something I want from you.” His tone is very serious, but his voice is laced with want.

“I thought when you threatened me that I wanted it, but there was no point to telling you while I still couldn’t take it,” Bruce says, voice a little slow and soft. “You have hard hands, I told you.”

“Can I kiss him?” Clint asks Tony.

Tony says, “As long as we’re in this room you can do whatever you want to him. Not forever, but for today. You can treat him as yours. I want to see how he does when I’m not directly involved anyway, and in a lot of ways you’re ideal for that. If I need to stop you, I can just force you down without having to kick you out for crossing a line.” He glances at Bruce. “Get up on the bed, Bruce,” Tony says, and Bruce does, kneeling in the center and looking up at the ceiling, because he’s never really paid much attention to Tony’s ceiling, but he thinks he would have probably noticed a zip line. But he sees immediately why he hadn’t. Tony’s ceiling is painted charcoal gray, and the O ring and the zip line tucked into it are the same color as the ceiling.

“What else do you have hiding in here, Tony?” Bruce asks, genuinely curious.

“Nothing you need to think about right now,” Tony says. He stacks four pillows up near the top of the bed and climbs up onto his feet on the bed to tug the zipline down from the O ring. “Lean forward, let’s make sure it’s a good height for you.”

Bruce leans his chest forward against the pillows, and Tony pulls the hook end of the zipline down with a little zrrping noise, and hooks it to Bruce’s hands behind his back, someplace on the harness, not on the cuffs themselves, which is what Bruce had expected, for some reason. He spends a few seconds fiddling with the length and Bruce hears it lock into place.

“It won’t keep him from pulling forward away from me,” Clint says, sounding thoughtful.

“He won’t pull away from you if you tell him not to,” Tony says, sounding completely certain of the fact. Bruce feels his face heat just a little, because Tony is absolutely right. Bruce wouldn’t deliberately pull away from any kind of bondage set up by his dominant. “Will you, Bruce?” Tony asks gently.

“Of course not, Tony, Clint. I’m not sure whom I should be addressing.” Bruce says, but not really worried about it either. They will tell him. He’s slipping further down, and one of them will tell him what to do.

“If I ask, address me,” Tony says. “If Clint talks, address him,” Tony says. “I want to see how you do with him mostly flying solo, but I need you to tell me right now if you think that’s going to hurt your subspace, Bruce.”

“Not as long as you’re here,” Bruce says. “I still need you to be here, Tony.”

“What kinds of toys does he like?” Clint asks, and Bruce lets out a slow, helpless shiver.

“If you mean dildos, then he doesn’t like any of them. He gets off on them, but it’s humiliating for him to have them used in him. Don’t let that stop you, though,” Tony says. “I assume you’re wanting a plug or something that will fit around the harness to hold it inside?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Clint says. “I want him to feel it inside when I hit him.”

“Come over and look,” Tony invites, and Clint watches Tony pull out the kink closet with something like greed on his face. 

“You don’t want to know how badly I’ve always wanted to look and see what you have in here,” Clint says, amused in a self-deprecating way.

“Be my guest,” Tony says, and because they’re both standing next to the kink closet now, Bruce can turn his head and watch them both at the same time.

Clint runs his hands along the row of belts and straps and crops and whips hanging along one side of the open door, and then begins scanning shelves and opening drawers, taking his time, but not dawdling either. “Can he take this?” Clint finally asks, holding out a long glass plug with ridges causing the light in the room to reflect and refract from it.

“He can take it,” Tony says. “I expected you to go with something narrower where his hole tightens around it.”

“This will work better for when I’m using my hand on him. It’s wide enough to shift around inside him, and it has a slim base. I don’t want to bruise my hand on whatever I pick out.” Clint grins a little. “Natasha has one similar to it. It will work the way I want it to with the spanking.”

Tony passes Clint a bottle of lube, and Clint turns and looks at Bruce where he’s positioned on the bed.

“Can I get a length of chain between his ankles, not too long, but long enough that this ankles aren’t pressed together. I don’t want to worry about his balance,” Clint says.

“I can do better,” Tony says, and bends and opens one of the bottom drawers. “The cuffs on his thighs were more or less made for a spreader bar, and if you hook those together, you won’t have to worry about his ankles at all.” There is some clanking and rattling, and Bruce is shivering with anticipation and humiliation. Clint finally finds what he wants, and climbs up onto the bed behind Bruce.

Tony drags the chair from the little sitting area around to the top of the bed, where Bruce can see him clearly any time he wants to, and settles into it. He’s watching Clint and Bruce with almost equal attention as Clint attaches the spreader bar to the big cuffs around Bruce’s thighs. It spreads Bruce’s legs a little wider, and the zipline pulls a little tighter at the harness at the back, but it actually feels a little better that way. More of his weight is resting on the line and less on the pillows piled beneath his chest.

Clint says, “Ready, Bruce?”

“Yes, Clint,” Bruce says a trifle unsteadily, but only a trifle. He’s still deep in his subspace, and not even the humiliation of the plug Clint is going to use in him can pull him back up from it.

“Where are you sitting, Bruce?” Tony asks.

“Point six, Tony,” Bruce says, and sees Tony looking both surprised and pleased.

Clint snaps the lid of the lube open, and a moment later his fingers slide cooly down the crack of Bruce’s ass, not pressing, not yet, but just getting him wet. Clint pulls them back, and then presses against Bruce’s hole with a single finger, gentle pressure that is nevertheless enough that Bruce’s body responds by going easy and letting Clint press it inside.

“Two if you want to,” Tony says. “He can take it.”

Clint doesn’t hesitate to slide another finger inside Bruce alongside the first, which burns and stretches him, but is wet enough with lube that most of the discomfort fades quickly, and Bruce can hear himself breathing hard as Clint fingers him open, again, not quickly, but not dawdling either. He adds a third finger, and Bruce wonders exactly how thick the plug he’s going to use is; he hadn’t been able to really get a good perspective on its size from across the room. Clint is quite deliberately avoiding his prostate, Bruce can tell, and that drops him a little further down.

“Bruce,” Tony says abruptly, into what had become a waiting silence. “You’re not going to be allowed to come when Clint spanks you. If he fucks you, you still aren’t allowed to come. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce says thickly, his throat going tight with unshed tears even as he feels his mind turn away from his cock the way it does when he knows he isn’t going to get to come, as though it becomes less important, and everything else magnifies in importance, so that suddenly Clint’s fingers inside him feel thicker and rougher.

Clint lets out a short, harsh breath, and then pulls his fingers free of Bruce’s ass and slides the plug, which feels ice cold, against his asshole. Clint presses it in the way he has done everything else, not quickly, but not dawdling, and the ripples in the glass of the thick plug slide zingingly across Bruce’s prostate. Bruce tenses, face hot with humiliation, but Clint strokes a soothing hand along one cheek of his ass as he settles the plug in place. Bruce understands what Tony had meant that the place where Bruce’s muscles clamp down around the plug isn’t anywhere near as narrow as he would have expected, and also what Clint meant about the part of the plug that keeps it from slipping into his body all the way, which is slender and lies almost directly along the crack of his ass. Clint strokes his hand across the outside of the plug, and it shifts insides Bruce, and Bruce realizes that Clint hadn’t lubed the plug. He’d pushed plenty of lube up into Bruce’s body, but the plug itself he hadn’t lubed, which makes it feel wider inside him, as though Bruce’s body has tightened up around it.

Clint shifts around to the right side of him -- Bruce always forgets he’s left handed, mostly because Clint seems to do almost equally well with either hand -- and runs his left hand across both cheeks of Bruce’s ass. Bruce can tell that the part of the plug keeping it from slipping entirely inside is nestled along the crack of his ass, so that Clint doesn’t have to worry about avoiding anything that might have stuck further out. He shudders under Clint’s hand, and when Clint pulls it back Bruce feels himself go loose in his bondage even as Clint’s hard, calloused hand smacks him hard across the middle of his ass. The plug inside Bruce jolts with the motion, and Bruce huffs out a helpless breath of pleasure, both things together combining to send a rush of endorphins sizzling through his system and knocking him all the way down into his subspace, as far as he can go, and it’s only the first blow. Bruce’s muscles go entirely lax, and he can’t even brace for the second blow, across the right cheek of his ass this time, and he jerks out a soft cry at the pain heating up his skin. 

Clint is quicker with this than he had been with the prep, and he’s good at it, hard, strong hands and thick biceps and forearms to drive the blows, and Bruce rocks back into Clint’s hand almost as soon as he picks up a rhythm that Bruce can catch, and the plug inside him jolts against his prostate about every third blow, so that Bruce can’t quite keep from crying out when it happens, just hitching breaths at the blows, but actual cries when the plug jams itself against Bruce’s prostate. Bruce’s ass grows first warm and then hot and stinging, and he is not crying, not yet, but he can feel everything so exquisitely, every blow sharp and amazing, every jolt against his prostate seeming to twist in the pit of his belly, roiling there helplessly without the outlet of an orgasm available to him. Each blow sends pleasure arcing up his spine and tangling between the cradle of his hipbones, and when the tears come they are almost silent, soft sobs when he’s so deep in his body, his head distant and unimportant, and the first dry orgasm catches him off guard and he yells out, his whole body going tight and feeling everything, the pull of the harness against every part of his body, the feel of the plug inside him, the way his hands spasm in their bondage, and every blow Clint strikes is a wonder of desperation and pain.

“If I don’t stop soon, he’s going to be bruised again,” Clint says, his breathing fast and light, but his voice twisted with lust and greed.

“He’s down as far as he can go, Clint, you’ve already taken him as deep as he knows how to go. He’ll let you keep doing it as long as you want to, but if you want to fuck him, he won’t object to that, either,” Tony says, softly, as though from a great distance.

He feels Clint’s fingers slipping under the exterior of the plug and then dragging it slowly out of his body, and Bruce shudders at that, too, at the suddenness of being empty, but then Clint’s cock, slick and thick and so much more than the plug presses into him, once, slow, as though just to get the feel of him, and then Clint hooks his fingers into the thin skin above Bruce’s hipbones and rams inside, his hips slapping painfully against his hot ass, and Bruce would push back into it, but Clint is holding him still and steady, and all Bruce can do is tighten down around his cock as much as he can, feeling every hot inch of it as it shoves its way into him and then drags back out again, and Clint says, “Give me another one, Bruce, let me feel what it feels like for you to come dry around my cock,” and Bruce lets out a low series of wailing cries, broken and stuttering from the force of Clint’s cock slamming into him again and again. 

Bruce’s ass is afire with pain, and Clint’s stamina is a force all of its own, hips slapping against Bruce’s sore ass, cock dragging along his prostate with nearly every stroke, and Bruce would let it go on as long as Clint would give it to him, but Clint had asked for something, and just Clint wanting it is enough to drive Bruce to want to give it to him, it’s what he is, it’s how he serves, and when the second dry orgasm rocks through him Clint groans like he’s in pain, his pace faltering suddenly and his hips losing their rhythm, and Clint breathes, “Jesus, Bruce, Jesus, you feel…” and then he goes still and tense, pushing so hard into Bruce it feels like he’s trying to climb inside, and then he is gasping, his cock jerking in Bruce’s ass, and Bruce feels a little flare of accomplishment, of rightness, that sense of giving everything to the person using him. His cock jerks in the harnesses cockring again, needy and wanting, and Clint cries out at the feel of Bruce’s recoil of pleasure causing his body to clench and twist around Clint’s cock, and then Clint is pulling back slowly, leaving Bruce empty and still wanting, but it’s okay to be wanting for Tony, Tony had told him already that Bruce would stay wanting, and Bruce stays down deep, body tense with need, but his mind content, distant, unimportant.

Clint says, “Some of these may bruise a little anyway,” from some place far away, and then Clint’s hands are on his ass, pressing hard with his fingertips and dragging them down across all the places that Bruce hurts. Bruce moans for it, would take more of it, but Clint only does it the once. “Tell me you’re not going to keep him from coming all day,” in a way that is almost a demand.

Tony says, “I will if it suits me,” and Bruce shudders at the idea of it, but is too far down to really be afraid.

“But, why?” Clint asks, sounding like he really wants to know, sounding baffled and maybe a little outraged.

“Because he’s not the same kind of sub as you are, Clint. He can linger on the edge of orgasm and enjoy it in a way that you can’t. Just trust me. I won’t take him too far.” Tony sounds matter-of-fact, and Bruce believes him completely, believes that there may not be a ‘too far,’ for Tony to take him to, as he’s willing to give everything up to Tony, to put his body and his mind in Tony’s hands and trust Tony to do what needs doing with them.

“It’s okay, Clint,” Bruce breathes, still crying a little, but trying to stop because he wants Clint to believe him. “I’m okay. This is what I am. Tony knows what to do with what I am.”

“But the dry orgasms aren’t the same,” Clint says. “They don’t give you any release.”

“No,” Bruce says. “They build up and up, but they’re good, too, just not in a way that is a release. I can take this, Clint. I was made this way.”

“Okay, Bruce,” Clint says, and runs soothing hands along the ridges of his ribs and the backs of his thighs. He doesn’t sound like he understands, but he sounds like he’s going to take Bruce’s word for it, and that is what is important.

Clint unhooks the spreader bar from between Bruce’s thighs and sets it off to one side along with the plug and the tube of lube. “Do you want me to let him down?” Clint asks.

“No, I’m not quite done with this position yet,” Tony says, and Bruce can hear the smile in his voice. “But it’s time for you to vacate, Clint. If you stay, you’re only going to ask questions until you’ve pulled him out of his headspace. Save them up and ask them sometime when we’re not in the middle of a scene.”

Clint doesn’t answer, but merely slides off the side of the bed and picks up his sweats and slides them on.

“Thank you, Bruce,” Clint says, and strokes a hand across Bruce’s hot and stinging ass again.

“Thank you, Clint,” Bruce says, and means it quite sincerely. “Don’t be worried. Tony will take care of me.”

“I know that,” Clint says softly. “Everyone knows that.” Then he circles the bed and twists up around the stack of pillows under Bruce’s chest to kiss him, those same kind of slow kisses from before, like Clint is memorizing everything about kissing him while he’s doing it.

Then he leaves silently, closing the door softly behind him.

Bruce already knows what Tony is going to do as soon as Clint leaves, so is unsurprised when Tony climbs up between the headboard and the pile of pillows under Bruce’s chest. He’s lost his clothes at some point, probably while Bruce had been drifting, and he doesn’t waste any time. He slides his cock into Bruce’s mouth and pushes all the way back, all the way in, and fists a hand in his hair and shoves roughly into Bruce’s throat. Bruce takes him in gladly, gratefully, and would have loved to have it go on long enough that Bruce could feel that first fading of consciousness, but it is all over too quickly for that. Tony barely lasts two minutes, murmuring Bruce’s name when he comes down Bruce’s throat. 

Bruce whines a little when Tony pulls out, and Tony chuckles. “Greedy,” he says, but then he reaches is up and unhooks the zipline, though he leaves it dangling where it is, and then turns Bruce around in a circle to release Bruce’s hands. He tosses away several of the pillows, and orders, “On your back, spread wide,” and Bruce flips over onto his back and lets Tony attach the wrist and ankle cuffs to the head and footboard. 

Bruce’s ass only feels a little sore where he’s resting it against the sheets, more warm and abraded than actually sore, and Tony watches him wriggle against the sheets for a few seconds to test the bounds of the soreness, smiling a little. “Good?” he asks.

“Yes, Tony. I could have taken more. I could have taken a lot more.”

“You took what he wanted you to take,” Tony says. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce agrees, flushing slightly at the very mild rebuke, but it does nothing to affect his subspace.

“Besides, I may want to lay down some marks of my own on your lovely ass, so it’s just as well he didn’t go all out on you,” Tony says. Bruce’s cock jumps in the harness, helpless with atavistic want, and Tony’s eyes are warm and coffee colored at he looks down at Bruce, gently at odds with his declaration of wanting to mark up Bruce’s ass himself later. He looks happy and relaxed, and Bruce feels happy at seeing that happiness and relaxation there, at knowing he’d had a part of making it happen.

“Now that you have me, what are you going to do with me?” Bruce asks, lips quirking into a small smile, even though he doesn’t really care that much what Tony decides to do to him. He is loose and easy in his mind, even with his body as needy and ready as it is, and he can’t think of anything that Tony might want to do to him that would change that.

“I’m still deciding,” Tony says, and strokes his hands across Bruce’s chest and ribs, slow, soothing motions that make Bruce’s skin shiver into goosebumps. He leans in and kisses Bruce, soft-mouthed and lazy, and when he pulls back asks, “You really meant it when you said that you handle orgasm denial well as long as you know ahead of time that that’s what I expect of you. You aren’t fighting it at all.”

“When I know I’m not going to get to use it, I can just sort of section off the part of my brain that needs to come. It makes everything else more, to do it, every touch and every blow, but it works for me, to keep me steady,” Bruce says. “I can stay here for a long time, Tony. Don’t worry about what Clint said.”

“I wasn’t worried, just remarking,” Tony says. “How would you feel about having me do some needleplay on your cock?”

Bruce feels his body jolt hard for a long moment, flexing up against the restraints at the idea of it, but manages to only say, “Whatever you want to do, Tony,” and means it. He wants it, the idea makes his head swim pleasantly, but he still means it. Tony can do anything with him that he wants. He is Tony’s right now completely, and is perfectly content to be so.

Tony slips off the side of the bed and goes to the kink closet, plucking something out of a drawer quickly this time, as though he knows exactly what he’s looking for and where to find it. “The amount of blood I actually draw isn’t likely to be a great deal,” Tony says, returning to the bed with a black box about the size of a hardback novel. “Is it something I need to be worried about?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve seen it done before, there isn’t a lot of blood. You’ll want to clean it up and dispose of it properly, but you shouldn’t be in any danger from it,” Bruce says, his gaze fixed on the box with rapt attention.

“After I do this, I’m going to want to flog your cock again,” Tony tells him without a trace of apology. “Just to make you take that pain on top of this one.”

Bruce shudders, his mouth suddenly dry, and merely nods.

Tony opens the latch on the box and pulls out several wrapped sterile needles, which he sits on Bruce’s stomach while he rummages in the box for things like alcohol pads and hand sanitizer. Bruce is a little glad to see the hand sanitizer come out of the box. He could live with it if Tony wanted to use gloves while piercing him, but he would have been disappointed.

“This won’t be too much?” Tony asks him, catching Bruce’s gaze and holding it. “This and the flogging combined, I mean. By that point I expect you to be half crazy with the need to come.”

“I will be,” Bruce agrees, his voice a little hoarse. “But it will be good, still, and eventually you will let me come, and it will be amazing when it finally happens.”

“If you’re good,” Tony says, smiling slightly. “And if you don’t bitch when I tell you I’m going to use Clint’s dildo in you while I do this.”

Bruce bite his bottom lip as humiliation floods through him, but says, “I won’t bitch, Tony. When do I ever bitch?”

Tony unhooks his ankles from the footboard and has him spread his legs, knees cocked up, and doesn’t even bother to stretch Bruce for it -- not that he probably needs it after Clint had fucked him -- but just lubes the glass dildo and slides it carefully into him while Bruce tries to hold as still as he can so that the needles in their sterile packaging don’t slide off of his belly where they’re still sitting. Each ridge of the dildo as it slides in and scrapes across his prostate draws a short, sharp breath from Bruce, and Bruce gets the idea that Tony would enjoy playing with it a bit more to see what noises he might be able to get Bruce to make if they weren’t already planning something else.

Then Tony has Bruce lower his legs again, making the dildo seem even bigger inside him, and attaches the cuffs around his ankles to the footboard.

“You’ve never done this?” Tony asks as he flips open the bottle of hand sanitizer and applies it liberally to his own hands. Then he rips open one of the alcohol pads and scrubs a little viciously at the underside of Bruce’s cock with it, which makes Bruce gasp a little in both pain and pleasure.

“No. Nipples, but never cock,” Bruce says.

“But you’re pretty sure you’re going to like it?” Tony asks.

“Almost totally sure, but if I don’t, I remember my safeword, Tony,” Bruce murmurs.

“Good,” Tony says, and picks up one of the needles and pops it out of its sterile packaging. The sound makes Bruce jump a little, anticipation churning in his belly along with fear and the humiliation of how it feels to be spread open and pinned by the dildo inside him.

Tony settles himself between Bruce’s spread thighs and gathers up a pinch of skin at the base of Bruce’s cock, having to work hard at it, as stretched as the skin is across Bruce’s cock right now. He doesn’t pause to ask if Bruce is ready, or even look up at Bruce at all. He simply slides the needle through the skin as if it were a piece of fabric. Bruce’s cock tries to jerk at the exquisite tortuous glory of the feeling, but Tony has the side of his hand braced against it to keep it still. Bruce is glad, because he can keep the rest of himself still, but can’t keep his cock from jerking at the sharp and searing stab of the needle through his skin. He closes his eyes for a long moment, trying to get his breathing under control, and when he opens them again, Tony is looking at his face, his smile wide and gentle.

“You should see how it looks,” Tony says, low and fervent. “I can feel the line of the needle under your skin if I run my fingers across it. I’m going to try for half a dozen.”

It is both the longest and shortest fifteen minutes of Bruce’s life. Every puncture, every slide of metal through his flesh, every exit of the needle from out from under his skin, is like being crucified, and Tony’s face as he does it is still and careful, but swimming with darkness and pleasure. It feels like being strung through with string, each string attached to Tony’s hands and to each of the other strings, so that the slightest movement makes them all twitch and stir. Bruce’s eyes refuse to focus, and he finds himself with them closed at least most of the time, as Tony lines the underside of his cock with needles, seeing it in his imagination, feeling every twitch of movement, and his cock is jerking endlessly now, not even Tony’s hand enough to keep it from trying to jerk up into the symphony of pain Tony is building in his cock. Bruce is leaking precome almost constantly, something he hardly ever does, but he can feel it pooling on his belly, and every slide of metal through his tender skin is like being cut open by Tony, everything inside him examined, and for a wonder, Bruce doesn’t cry at all, though his breathing gets extremely ragged for the last two needles, the ones that climb up the underside of his cock toward the tip, and he can feel his hips wanting to twitch up into the sensation even as he recognizes that twitching his hips up will do no good to provide more of that sensation. He loves it instantly and unconditionally, and when Tony pulls his strong, calloused hands back from Bruce’s cock to stare down at the needles running down the length of it, he licks his lips, his eyes a little dazed, as though he had been almost as lost in it as Bruce had been.

He looks up into Bruce’s face, and his eyes go a little wide at what he sees there. Bruce doesn’t know what he looks like, but he knows what he feels like, and Bruce would beg him to go on with it, to slide a needle through his cock anywhere there is space to put one, as it’s one of the purest and most ecstatic kinds of pain Bruce has ever felt. Just breathing is enough to cause his cock to move enough to tug at the needles buried under the thin skin of his cock, and each breath thrills through Bruce with the piercing arc of electric pleasure, down his cock, yes, but also raging in the pit of his belly and traveling in waves up the line of his spine and wrapped around the base of his spine like barbed wire.

“I have four more needles,” Tony says hoarsely, and Bruce moans out his agreement without saying a word. The last four Tony threads in between those that are already piercing his cock, and are even better, Tony’s hands brushing up against the plastic caps on the ends of the needles already threaded through Bruce’s cock, having to be more careful to pinch up just enough skin to slide the needle through, and Bruce is nearly vibrating where he is lying, still and quiet except for his breathing, but shivering ceaselessly throughout the whole thing, knowing that if Tony unsnapped the cockring built in to the harness now, Bruce could come with the feeling of the needles still buried in his cock, pulling at his skin, jerking in time with the pulse of his orgasm, and he wants that so badly.

When Tony finishes with the last four, Bruce is shuddering all over, and his cock is jerking hard when Tony pulls his hands back and lets him go, and each jerking motion of his cock feels like a tiny orgasm all on it’s own, like his cock is studded with tiny, desperately painful mini-orgasms, and he doesn’t ask Bruce, doesn’t need to ask him, can obviously see it in his face.

He unsnaps the part of the harness that is wrapped around Bruce’s cock and balls, and Bruce shrieks out a sound of pleasure that is both piercing and harsh, his whole body arching up and back, his hips rocking up in time with the desperately needful spurting of his cock across his belly, and Tony strokes across the underside of Bruce’s cock with just two fingertips, barely any pressure, but it’s enough that it goes on, each movement shifting the needles inside him minutely so that it just goes on, and even once Bruce isn’t shooting anything anymore, he is still arched backward and spasming excruciatingly at the pure and painful necessity of it.

When it is over, Bruce collapses back down onto his back on the bed and stares at Tony, unable to speak or even to think, just watches Tony’s face, that sultry satisfaction underlying an expression of possessive pleasure. Bruce’s breathing eventually settles into something approximating normal, and neither her nor Tony have actually spoken yet. Bruce is still shivering, and can still feel that he’s mostly hard, his cock jerking a little through the aftermath of orgasm just pulling at the needles buried in his flesh enough to keep him that way. Tony looks down from Bruce’s face to his cock again, and then, without seeming to even think about it, snaps the leather cockring part of the harness back around Bruce’s cock and balls. Bruce moans softly at being handled, the tug of the needles piercing his skin still so good.

“So,” Tony says finally, looking back up at Bruce’s face as he does so. “That was one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen, and Bruce, I’ve seen a lot.” He’s smiling a little, but doesn’t try to hide the seriousness in his voice, the vehemence with which he means it, and Bruce shudders again at just the sound of it, of knowing that it had been as good for Tony, in its way, as it had been for Bruce.

“It’s so good, Tony,” Bruce manages hoarsely. “They were, they are, they feel so good, thank you, I wouldn’t have asked, but I wanted to come with them inside me, and it was so good, thank you.”

“I could see how much you needed it all over your face and shivering through every inch of your body,” Tony says. “I wouldn’t ever deny you something that you needed that badly.” He smoothes his hands along Bruce’s splayed thighs. “I’m going to have to fuck you now, so the needles have to come out. I can wait for a little while, if you need them in longer, though, so I’m leaving it up to you.”

Bruce ponders this for several long moment, he doesn’t want to be selfish, he doesn’t want to leave Tony wanting, but… “Just for a few minutes,” he says finally. “Just until I’m completely hard again, which isn’t going to take long with them in me. Please, Tony.”

“If I hadn’t spent the last two hours of my life with a hard on, I’d leave them in you for a few hours, maybe just toy with them enough to keep you needy and sweet. But I can wait a few more minutes, no problem,” Tony says, smiling down at Bruce. “When I get more, I’ll get the kind you can cap off, so that I can fuck you while they’re still inside you.” It’s said almost casually, but Bruce chokes on a breath at the idea of it, his mind spinning through the possibilities so that his cock starts to jerk again against his belly, fully hard and leaving him almost as desperate as he had been to begin with.

“Don’t tease,” he whispers helplessly, and Tony reaches up and strokes the fingertip of one finger down the underside of Bruce’s cock, leaving him sucking in air and trembling violently again.

“I’m not teasing, I promise,” Tony says gently, and Bruce moans as he strokes the single fingertip along Bruce’s cock again. “You ready?” he asks, just as gently.

Bruce swallows back tears and answers, “Yes, Tony,” in a voice that is both hoarse and unsteady now. “Though I think next time we don’t need to bother with a dildo if you’re going to be piercing my cock. Once you started, I totally forgot it was even there.”

Tony laughs. “So noted,” he says, and begins plucking needles with quick dexterity out of the underside of Bruce’s cock, dropping each of them into the black box as he removes it. The removal is good in a different way than the application had been. It stings like crazy, which is good, but doesn’t give him that same kind of feeling of being slowly taken over by the needles in his cock. Tony takes out another alcohol swab and cleans the blood off of Bruce’s cock, which is also good, stingingly painful as well. When the needles are all gone, Bruce’s cock aches just a little, but no worse than it would have if Tony had used the flogger on it, just differently.

Tony latches the box and sets it aside on the nightstand, and then bends and releases the cuffs around Bruce’s hands and ankles from the bed. 

“Roll over on your belly. Here, wait a minute,” he says, and then shoves the pile of pillows that hadn’t gotten tossed off the side into the middle of the bed. “Lay over that,” he says, and Bruce does. Tony hooks the cuffs around his wrists to the bar under the headboard again, but he presses at the backs of Bruce’s thighs until he gets his knees up under him, and then uses the spreader bar Clint had left discarded on one side of the bed between the cuffs on Bruce’s thighs. “Knees forward just a little further,” Tony says, and Bruce moves his knees up until the pillows under his hips block all forward progress Then he unbuckles the harness in the back where the straps criss-cross, spreading them apart so that the line of Bruce’s back is mostly bare and the straps of the harnesses back just lie empty folded out on either side of Bruce’s chest. “That will do,” Tony says. He shifts over and slides off the edge of the bed, and comes back a moment later with a medium length, heavy looking leather flogger and a gag. “Knock on the wall for me, just so I know that you can if you need to,” Tony instructs, and Bruce shifts his hand around so that he can thump his knuckles against the wall. “You’ve been flogged before?” Tony asks, only half a question.

“Yes, but not with anything that heavy duty,” Bruce says, trying and failing to keep the anticipation out of his voice. “My first dominant didn’t have one, and after that, I took whatever I could get. Can I see it up close?”

Tony brings the flogger around to the front of the bed and spreads the strands out so that Bruce can see them. 

“It’s got more bulk to it than what I’ve had used on me before. More strands, I mean. Also, more of the strands are knotted. I’ve only ever been hit with a flogger with barbs worked into the strands once.” He pauses. “I really liked it. Are these sharpened?” Bruce is thinking of the barbs worked into the small flogger, which are dulled.

“No, not sharpened deliberately, but not dulled like the ones are on the flogger that I use on your cock. They will be sharp-ish, but if they do cut you up, it shouldn’t be more than a scratch. I’m not going to put anything on you to protect your balls,” he tells bruce. “The harness pulls them far enough forward to mostly keep them out of the way. Ideally, I’d do this to you on the cross, but I still haven’t fixed it so I can fuck you on the cross, and when I’m finished with you, I’m not going to want to wait.”

“Whatever you want, Tony,” Bruce says, nerves and desire at war in his belly, his sore cock pressed up against the stack of pillows beneath his hips.

“I want your cock pressed against the bed so that you feel the pain of the play piercing every time I hit you,” Tony says. “And then every time I fuck into you.”

Bruce shudders silently with fearful anticipation, but just says, “I’m yours, Tony.”

Tony leans forward across the spread tails of the flogger and presses a soft kiss to Bruce’s mouth. “Yeah, you are,” he says, and then pulls the flogger out from in front of Bruce and sets it on the side of the bed. “Open for the gag,” he says.

Bruce shudders again, but opens his mouth and lets Tony press a wide but fairly short length of rubber into his mouth. It depresses Bruce’s tongue, and is thick enough that it doesn’t let him close his mouth all the way. He bites down on it curiously, and realizes he can do so with all of his teeth. It’s almost more of a bit than a gag, except for the way that it plugs the rest of his mouth as well. Tony buckles it in place, tugging strands of Bruce’s hair out from around the buckle area where it might get tangled and pull. Then he clips something long and leather to the front side of the gag -- Bruce hadn’t got a good look at what the front had looked like, so is surprised -- and pulls the strands back, one on either side of Bruce’s head. Tony gives the leather straps a little jerk, and Bruce’s head rocks back on his neck. It sends a jolt a pure lust shooting straight to his groin.

“I won’t use them while I’m using the flogger. Just when I’m fucking you, afterward,” Tony says, his voice dark with amusement, as though he knows how Bruce had responded to the straps already somehow. “Nod if you understand me.”

Bruce nods.

“I am going to warm you up for this one,” Tony tells him. “You probably don’t need it, you could probably take it as hard as I can give it to you right out of the gate, but the warm up is just an added layer of pain, like the spanking Clint gave you is going to be an added layer of pain. With a tool this hard, I think you’ll end up appreciating the opportunity to get used to it before I really have at you with it.”

Bruce nods again, would have nodded if Tony had told him he intended to flog him until he couldn’t walk, he is so deeply enmeshed in his subspace, but then, Tony would never do that. Tony is safe.

Bruce presses his sore cock against the pillow beneath it, and it throbs with a certain satisfying amount of pain.

The flogger makes a cracking sound as it moves through the air, nothing so sharp as a whip, but definitely more than just the whistle of cane or crop. So Bruce is ready for it when it comes down, and Tony hadn’t been kidding, the blow is not very hard at all. What comes across most is a sense of all over warmth, from the middle of his back all the way up to his shoulders where the strands of the flogger had spread. The sound it makes when it hits Bruce is a flat sounding crack, but curiously syncopated, and he realizes it’s because not all of the strands strike at the same time. Even as light as the blow is, it makes Bruce huff out a sound of surprise and pleasure through his nose. The knotted strands are rough enough to really sting, while the rest of them feel almost like a caress along the back of his body. He hadn’t felt any of the bites of metal of the spurs, but he’s sure he will. Tony swings again, moving slightly lower down on his back, and still not very hard, just a warm weight to the pain, a kind of tingling bite from the knotted strands, and this time he does feel a couple of the metal spurs scrape across his skin.

Bruce is already almost as relaxed as he can be and still be awake, but he nevertheless feels his body loosen a little further, more than he’s ever managed before, and for a solid ten minutes, Tony warms him up with the flogger, moving from shoulders to back to ass to thighs, and it isn’t until he’s getting toward the end of that soothing stretch of time that he starts to understand what Tony means about the layers of pain. Each time the flogger strikes him across someplace it’s struck him before, it becomes warmer and a little more tender, not so much that it actually is serious pain, but enough that Bruce can gauge what serious pain from this flogger is going to feel like. His hips rock against the pillows mounded under them, pressing his sore cock against them with every blow, but they rock only gently, and Bruce knows that it isn’t going to stay gentle forever.

When Tony stops, Bruce prepares himself for more serious pain, but instead Tony leans across the bed and runs his hands over Bruce’s bare back and ass and thighs, and what had been an almost soothing warmth wakes up into a clamor of unsuspected pain, fairly mild as pain goes, but hot and sizzling anyway as Tony’s hands smooth across his skin, waking up the mild stinging into something more buzzingly aware. Bruce’s breathing starts to speed up, and Tony laughs a little, not at Bruce, but like he’s laughing in pure joy at what he can do to Bruce.

“One day when you don’t mind being at least as bad off as you were after the caning for a couple of days, I’ll lay it all down in layers,” Tony tells him. “Start out easy, and then make each pass harder and harder, see if I can push you up to a point where you can’t take any more. I’m looking forward to finding out if you have a point like that, Bruce. But I won’t do it today. Just another couple of passes, because I want you hurting while I fuck you, and hurting when I bind you back down on your back and watch your face while you wallow in your subspace. So don’t think what you’re getting this time is all that there is, is what I’m telling you. I’m going to push you, but not that far and not that hard. Just hard enough to make you think it’s hard.” Tony’s voice has a low and dreamy tone to it that still manages to convey the threat in his words very clearly, conveys it in the desire his tone displays, his desire to do what he says he can do, even if it won’t be today. Bruce shivers at it and wants it, and imagines that when this is done, he’ll have more reason to be afraid of what Tony can really do with a flogger.

Tony’s hands slide away from his body, and the sound of the flogger cracks through the air again, and the warmth still hits Bruce first, from point of contact, and then spreads out across the whole expanse of the back of his body, traveling along the nerves Tony had already awakened by warming him up. The pain is intense, a deep thud of pain, all interspersed with the strands of the flogger whispering out across his skin from the point of impact and leaving welts around that point in what must be an interesting looking pattern. The flogger comes down again, lower, and it still travels down the skin Tony had ‘warmed up,’ but mostly it jerks harshly at the skin he had struck just the moment before, and Bruce lets out a cry that isn’t quite a scream, but that he’s pretty sure will make it that far before Tony is done with him. It’s muffled by the gag into a softer sound, but it’s loud enough for Tony to hear it, and murmur, “That’s right, yell for me,” as he brings the flogger down a third time, a dense center of pain all ringed around by the flickering strands of the rest of the flogger, all pulling at his already heated skin and also pulling at the newest, harder set of blows, and Bruce does yell again, and rocks his hips hard against the pillows under his sore cock, which makes him groan a little at the end. The next blow lands across Bruce’s ass, strands of the flogger spreading out to bite at his upper thighs and his lower back, and this time Bruce lets out a full on shout, still not a scream, he won’t scream until he has to because he can’t help it, he won’t scream until it is honest screaming, but he can feel that coming. 

The floggers strands rain down across the backs of his thighs, and despite the way the harness pulls his cock and balls forward, a few of the strands slip between his thighs and snap at the backs of his balls. Bruce shouts again, both in pleasure and miserable pain, and it feels like one of the barbs of metal has scratched along the back of his scrotum hard enough to bite in, hard enough that he feels it catch at the skin and then be jerked back again just as quickly, and that’s enough to bring Bruce to tears. He simultaneously hopes that doesn’t happen again and that it happens every time Tony strikes his thighs, a juxtaposition of thinking that doesn’t worry him in the slightest. He is writhing now, just a little, not trying to get away, but just struggling against and into the pain, he can never stop himself from doing it if he’s bound down and can do it without disobeying an order. His body does it all without his active knowledge or consent.

This time when the flogger slams down between Bruce’s shoulder blades, he does scream, feeling, it seems like, every strand of it striking his already tenderized skin. He feels a couple of the barbs catch at his skin and draw lines of fire scraping across it, and shudders at the feel of it, wonders if he’s bleeding or if it only feels that way, and Tony brings the flogger down in the middle of his back, that place where it feels the most, or where it makes the rest of his skin react the most, where it feels like he’s being struck all over at once with the way that it pulls his skin tight over muscles that are straining, his cock is straining against the pillow under it, and Bruce is screaming behind the gag, something that would have been jagged and ripping if it had been allowed to be let loose free of the gag. “Almost done, Bruce, you’re perfect, I love the way you try not to scream every time until you can’t stop from screaming, like I have to earn them if I want to wring them out of you, and you should see your back and ass, and I am definitely doing this on the cross next time because I can do much better than this,” and then Tony brings the flogger down across Bruce’s ass and Bruce shrieks as, again, a couple of the strands of the flogger flip down between his thighs and slice across the back of his balls, and his cock aches with how hard he’s pressing it against the pillows, and the strands of the flogger striking his balls feels terrible and wonderful at once. 

Bruce expects one more blow, one more against the backs of his thighs, and he’s weeping with his brow jammed up against his forearm, waiting for it, but then Tony drops the flogger in a puddle on the side of the bed and climbs up behind him, nimble fingers pulling the plug out of him -- and again, he had been so wrapped up in the pain that he had hardly noticed that it was still in him -- and tossing it aside. The snap of the lid of a bottle of lube comes about five seconds before the head of Tony’s cock is pressed against his hole, which is perfectly ready to accept a cock after having been plugged so long. Bruce groans behind the gag as Tony pushes into him in one long slide, slow and deliberate and careful, and then Tony wraps the leather of the straps around his right hand and takes hold of Bruce’s hip with the other, lifts himself up so that he’s resting with one knee on the bed, and one foot planted and lifting himself up a few degrees, and then plunges into Bruce with brutal force, dragging Bruce’s head back with the straps coming from the gag, which breaks the scream Bruce had let out in half, started as Tony shoved in, and then cracking in the middle as Tony’s hips slap across the hot skin of his ass and Tony pulls back on the straps. This is a sound that Tony seems to like, the cracking of Bruce’s cries, because he sets a punishing rhythm with his cock, the angle so extreme that he’s almost pushing directly down into Bruce’s ass, and jerks at the straps just as the scream starts to claw its way out of Bruce’s throat, so that each jerk of the straps chokes it back into a shuddering shout. 

Tony lets go of the hip he’s holding to set his palm in the center of Bruce’s back, which makes Bruce scream all on it’s own, and that’s before Tony leans forward, still up with one foot planted on the bed, and braces himself with the hand in the middle of Bruce’s back, holding himself at the angle he wants by pressing his palm and slightly curled fingers into the crisscrossing welts right in the middle of his back, where it hurts the most and where the ripples of that hurt spread the widest. Bruce’s ass is on fire from the slap of Tony’s hips thrusting against that tender skin, his cock is aching, both with need and with pain, and even still, with all of that, Bruce’s hips are jerking his cock down against the pillow beneath it, and Tony’s cock is drilling into him mercilessly, not just pressing against his prostate, but jamming so hard into it that the darkness behind Bruce’s closed eyelids goes briefly and blindingly white with every stroke. Tony’s hand spread wide in the middle of his back feels like it is bigger than it can possibly be, like it stretches from his shoulders to his ass and from one side of his ribs to the other, and Bruce understand that it’s just the pull of Bruce’s abraded skin reacting to the pressure there, but it doesn’t matter, it only matters that Tony knows it, knows how to do it, and is doing it to Bruce in a way that is making Bruce’s mind plummet down and out from his body, hearing his own screams as if from a distance, feeling the need to come very clearly and presently, but not actually worried about whether or not he gets to come, and even the fire of his breath burning in and out of his lungs seems unimportant. 

Tony is what matters, Tony’s harsh and heaving breaths, the low stream of profanity that he’s directing at Bruce but which Bruce understands actually has very little to do with Bruce, Tony’s pumping hips and bunching thighs, Tony’s hand spread across his back, knowing what it must be doing to Bruce and doing it anyway, doing it _for_ Bruce, because he knows how it will feel to Bruce, and Bruce gives himself over totally to Tony’s need and his desperation, different than what what Bruce needs, but complementary, which is all that matters, that they are complementary, and when he feels Tony tensing, ready to come, his fingertips digging deeply into the ravaged skin of Bruce’s back, his thrusting becoming uneven and savage at the same time, Bruce lets himself love it as much as he does, and feels the muscles of his ass clamp down and clench around Tony’s cock as he shouts out an orgasm he’s not quite allowed to have because he knows Tony will feel it and understand it and that it will be good for Tony, dry or not, that Bruce’s body still stiffens and tightens around the shaft of Tony’s cock whether he actually gets to shoot or not, and he hears Tony’s low cry of surprised and anguished pleasure, and it is enough to send another rippling recoil of that almost-orgasm thrumming through Bruce’s body. 

Tony shouts again, shoving in twice more, and then groans out his pleasure, gasping, “God, Bruce, I love to fuck you almost as much as I love to hurt you, you’re so fucking gorgeous underneath me, the most gorgeous thing I have ever fucking felt,” and then he’s sliding his foot back down so that he’s on his knees again and he removes his hand from the middle of Bruce’s back, holding himself up off of Bruce with his hands on either side of Bruce’s chest, but his hips are still firmly pressed to Bruce’s ass as he leans down and presses his lips to the blazing skin between Bruce’s shoulder blades. “That was so good, Bruce,” Tony murmurs, his breath warm against the skin between Bruce’s shoulder blades, making Bruce shiver. “The next time I do this to you, I’m going to prove to you that I’m as good with a flogger as Coulson is with a cane, and you’re going to adore it, Bruce, you’re going to wallow in every second of it, and I can’t wait to hurt you like that, I can’t wait to do it to you.”

Bruce lets out a soft, sobbing sort of sound, though he isn’t afraid, is, if anything, eager to be exposed to something Tony thinks will be better than this, but he is still gagged and cannot say so, and he’s still crying because he almost always does, and it’s the only sound he really can make in response to Tony.

As if Tony knows this, he reaches up with one hand and unbuckles the gag, tugging it gently out from between Bruce’s lips, but then discarding it carelessly alongside the other things they’ve used and set aside today.

Bruce says, “I love you, Tony,” without meaning to, though he does mean it, and Tony presses his lips between Bruce’s shoulder blades again.

“I love you, too, Bruce,” he says, without any apparent embarrassment or hesitation. “Did you love the flogging?” Even as he asks the question, Tony is pulling the harness tight around the back of his body, buckling it so that it holds him tight again, and the place where the straps criss-cross presses against almost the same place that Tony had placed his hand while he had ridden Bruce, so that the pain of it stays kindled and warm there.

“Yes,” Bruce says, voice a grating rasp, and Tony pulls back out of Bruce so abruptly that Bruce lets out a little cry of pain and dismay at the separation.

“Let me get you a drink, I want to hear everything you thought about it,” Tony says, and slides into his jeans and t-shirt and leaves the bedroom without untying Bruce, leaving him with his aching and desperate cock pressed up against a pile of pillows, leaving him with the phantom feel of his hand pressed into the middle of his back, aggravated now by the criss-cross of the harness pressed against it, and the low, rough ache of abrasion along the entire back side of his body. 

It isn’t as vicious as a caning, it’s more spread out, for one, and it’s not as sharp, but if Tony is serious that it can leave him in the same kind of shape as a caning if it’s done right, Bruce is almost desperate to try it. He loves Tony’s flogger with what he could see becoming a kind of unholy obsession, and he hopes to get to know it much better as soon as possible. He wonders if it could be used on his front, thinks about the spread of the strands, and decides probably nowhere except for right on the belly, and even then, it would have to be done lightly. This one is too heavy for that, too dense, but oh, he would be willing if Tony wanted to try. He could keep his head tipped back, and Tony could use the leather sheath to protect his cock, and it might have to be less than what Tony is capable of doing to his back, but Bruce is sure it would be something.

Tony comes back with a bottle of Blue Machine, and unhooks Bruce’s wrists from the bar under the headboard so that he can sit up and drink it. Tony’s eyes are bright with excitement, his face flushed a little with exertion, and the first thing that Bruce can think to say to him once he’s drunk down half of his juice is, “Can you be naked again, too, please, Tony?”

Tony doesn’t even ask why. He just strips down and leaves his clothes on the floor by the bed.

“So, tell me,” Tony says, and settles down tailor fashion next to Bruce on the bed.

“I have to… I am going to have to figure out a way to rework the scale in my head,” Bruce says after several long moments of thought. “When you have done this a lot, you have a certain level that you think is as far down as you can go, but today was more than that. Not just the flogging, though I love your flogger, Tony, and I won’t forget that you promised me a full demonstration of your capabilities with it, but it started before that. It started with Clint, right before he left, because he was so worried, and I didn’t know how to explain to him not to be worried. But the cock piercing and the flogging both pushed me down deeper than I have been before. It’s not like Steve, who has a whole lot of room down below what he’s experienced before to explore, but it was still down deeper.”

“Can you control when you orgasm dry, Bruce?” Tony asks, eyes gleaming a little, some part interest, some part danger.

“No, not quite. But I can _not_ come dry when I feel it coming, I can hold it back and then let it go when it feels right to do it. I didn’t know I could before. I don’t think I would have ever realized if Clint hadn’t asked me to do it for him, and just him asking made it into something I could do almost at will.” Bruce shakes his head and takes another big swallow of his juice. “I don’t think it will be that quick and easy most of the time, I don’t think I will usually be able to come dry at will. And sometimes they take me completely by surprise, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to resist one that comes like that. But this time I could. And when you were fucking me, I realized I could, I was ready, but I waited instead, until you were ready. It’s still not the same as an orgasm,” Bruce says, only a little sulkily. “Not even as good as a hands free orgasm. But it’s good. It’s an almost-orgasm. So close you can almost feel it, but not close enough to really feel it all.”

“Did you feel the layers of the flogging, Bruce. Only a warm up and then a couple of easy layers this time, but do you see what I mean?” Tony asks.

“Yes,” Bruce says. “It’s something that I’ve had happen before, but it’s never been encompassing like that. It has never been the whole back of my body.”

“No, you can really only do it with a flogger and have it take you from shoulders to thighs. Other things you can do for certain parts alone, like a paddle for your ass, but the flogger is the only one that covers the same area of skin except for maybe a cat, and a cat is more of a whip than a flogger. You hit with the ends, not with whole instrument, so it’s different.” Tony gestures at his bottle. “Are you finished with that?”

Bruce drains the rest of the bottle, and then hands it to Tony. Tony sets it on the bedside table, and then removes the separator bar from between Bruce’s thighs. “On your back,” Tony says.

Bruce looks at him for a moment, feeling his eyes widen.

“Trust me,” Tony says, and Bruce does, of course, so he knee walks up to the middle of the bed and turns around, lowering himself slowly and carefully onto his back. And finds out that it’s not that bad. That it hurts, yes, but nothing like the caning had hurt, and the pain is so spread out that no one area is overwhelmed by it. The only part of him that is truly sore is the spot in the middle of his back which Tony had used to balance his weight, the spot directly under the criss-cross of straps at the back of the harness. “If I had given you the full treatment, you wouldn’t be lying on your back right now,” Tony tells him. “But you got the light version, so you should be mostly okay. How is your cock?”

“Tender,” Bruce says. “I’d like to come with you touching me.”

“It’s going to hurt,” Tony says, but he’s grinning. “Settle back for a while. Tell me about going deeper for you. How much deeper was it really?”

“Tony, I don’t know,” Bruce says honestly. “Only that it was further down, because I didn’t realize I had anything further down. It took me by surprise. I’ll try to keep track of it a little better the next time it happens.”

Tony leans forward and kisses him. “Don’t worry about it,” he advises. “Just take it for what it is and be happy to find out it’s there. There’s no reason to adjust the scale from what you’re comfortable with right now. We can just move down into the negatives. If you’re just finding out you’ve got more down there than you had always thought, it may end up taking some serious work to take you there again. There is no hurry. You already give up so much of yourself when you’re down.” Tony’s voice is tender on the last sentence, and makes Bruce’s prickle with tears.

“It’s past time for lunch,” Tony says. “Way past, when I went out there to get you a drink, they were all still there, except for Coulson and Steve, who might be able to find something better to do with their time.” His tone is wry. “I want to put a plug in you,” Tony says, without apology or even any real gentleness. “Mostly because I can’t get you into the shower without taking the harness off, and I don’t want to do that, Bruce, not today, but also partly because it will keep you filled up with my come, and I like the idea of that very much.”

Bruce tries to imagine knee walking with a plug inside him, and shivers, but he doesn’t tell Tony no. “Not the one Clint used,” is as close as he can come. “It’s too big, I don’t think I’ll be able to move with it in me.”

“No,” Tony says, and this time his voice is soothing. “This time just something small, something that shouldn’t curtail your movements too much, but it will be obvious that you’re plugged Bruce, if any of them are still out there waiting to see. Can you live with that?”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce says in a low, tight voice that skates along the edge of a tremble, and Tony bends forward and kisses him softly, mouth gentle and easy against Bruce’s lips, tongue slick and soft against the inside of Bruce’s mouth, no teeth at all, just a kiss for a reward, and Bruce is too far down to feel as humiliated as he might be about that at another time. As it is, he just takes it for what it is and enjoys the softness of Tony’s mouth on his.

Tony goes to the kink closet and comes back with what looks like a very slender plug indeed, except that there is a knob on the outside of it, and it’s going to make it obvious, as Tony had said, that Bruce is plugged. Bruce doesn’t object or look too long at the thing, but when Tony unhooks the cuffs around his ankles from the foot of the bed, he lifts his leg and plants his feet on the bed to give Tony room to work. Bruce is still slick enough from Tony fucking him that Tony doesn’t bother with lubing Bruce up, and it burns for just a few seconds, before it fades into the background of his desire and pain and discomfort, the whole thing feeling of one piece, none of it complete without the rest of it to make it into what it is. The dildo is slender, but Bruce’s hole clamps down tight around the narrowest part, and he knows he’s going to feel it every time he moves. 

Tony unhooks the cuffs around his wrists from the bar beneath the headboard, and helps Bruce slide up onto his knees. The pain in his back, and ass are throbbing with blood, his thighs only a little better, and he sways a little once he’s up on his knees, trying to orient himself to being upright again. Tony’s hands steady him, stroking his arms in long, soothing motions, and when Bruce finally feel like he can move, Tony turns him and draws his hands back up to the middle of his back again, immobilizing them and answering any lingering questions Bruce might have had at whether or not he’s going to be allowed to feed himself. He hasn’t really thought so, and it bothers him a lot less now than it had this morning.

He realizes, a little thunderstruck, that he had really started to move down so that he could dip below what he would have previously said was his bottom level, at breakfast that morning. At the way that it had all started off with him feeling shy and uncertain, and ending up with nothing at all bothering him, feeling as relaxed as he ever had in company with the rest of the team. He hadn’t gone lower than he had thought possible during, not then, but that had been the beginning of what had urged him lower with Clint, and then with the cock piercing.

Once he understands that about himself, he can’t really deny any longer Tony’s assertion that Bruce likes to be on exhibition, that it doesn’t just not bother him, but actually does something for him, though he can’t figure out exactly what it is right now. His brain is in a distant country, and Bruce is content to leave it that way for right now. He’ll think about it later, he’ll talk to Tony about it and they’ll figure it out together, but for now, it’s simply good to let Tony help him slip off the side of the bed without being worried about what the others will think when they see him. Tony hooks the hanging straps up into their loops to keep them from dangling, and hooks the leash back onto Bruce’s collar -- Bruce isn’t sure when, exactly, it had been taken off -- and then asks, “Are you hungry, Bruce? I’m just assuming here because it’s almost three.”

“Yes, Tony,” Bruce says. “I’m hungry.” His stomach takes that moment to chime in its opinion, and Tony laughs. “Pretty hungry,” Bruce admits, feeling his cheeks heat, but not minding that either.

“We may have to fend for ourselves. I don’t know if anyone went to the trouble of making anything,” Tony says. “I may have to let you have your hands at least long enough to let you make us something to eat. I’d do it, but I’m not sure we’d want to eat whatever I managed to cook on my own.”

Bruce isn’t worried about this any more than he’s worried about anything else, and just falls in on Tony’s left as they make their way out of the bedroom and into the rest of the penthouse.

Tony is right, everyone is still there, but he’s wrong about Coulson and Steve having better things to do. In fact, Steve is standing in the recessed sitting area with his arms stretched out while a stranger takes measurements around his chest and waist and jots things down into a little notebook. Coulson is holding a large book, what looks like it might be a portfolio of the man’s work, and is paging through it slowly, his expression thoughtful and intent. Steve is blushing like a bride, but he seems mostly calm other than that.

“We ordered Chinese,” Clint says, from where he’s lounging back in his chair at the bar, two of the the legs rocked up off of the floor as he leans his weight back against it. “It still should be even mostly still warm,” he says, and nods toward a couple of plastic bags sitting on the kitchen island. Tony moves over to investigate, and Bruce moves with him, feeling the plug shift and move with every motion, but finding it not painful at all, and not something he can’t work around. 

Natasha is watching the two of them intently, her gaze swinging from Tony and down to Bruce and then back again. Bruce doesn’t know what is in her mind, but she doesn’t seemed worried. Just as though she’s thinking deeply about something. Thor has moved himself into one of the plush armchairs in the sitting area so that he can watch Steve get measured.

“Are you going to want something that goes as low as his thighs?” the man asks Phil, and Phil throws a glance at Steve, who just looks back at him with wide eyes.

“Yes,” Phil finally says. “I’m leaning toward this one.” He turns the folio around to display the picture to the stranger measuring Steve.

“Well, he has the musculature for it,” the man says, his eyes studying the picture -- Bruce can’t tell if it’s a picture or a drawing from where he is -- and looking back and forth between the picture and Steve’s naked chest. He tells Steve, gently, as though sensing his embarrassment, “I’m going to have to get you to take your jeans off so that I can measure your thighs. We can retire to someplace more private if you like.”

Steve stiffens a little, chin cocked, and says, “No, this is fine,” and unbuttons and unzips his jeans and shucks them down, leaving him in a pair of teal boxer briefs. His face is bright red, but his back is straight and his voice is steady. “Underwear, too?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” the man says gently, and Steve peels his underwear down his legs and lets it drop atop his crumpled jeans. He’s semi-erect, and Bruce wonders if he’d be responding a lot more enthusiastically in the hard on department if Tony or Phil were doing the measurements. Even still, a partial hard on is better than Bruce would have thought he’d be able to manage when under the hands of a stranger.

Tony is pulling open containers of chinese food and transferring the food to plates, and Bruce is too short on his knees to see what Tony is even picking out for them to eat. 

Clint gets up and puts the kettle on the stove, pausing to run his hand through Bruce’s hair as he passes him on his way back to the bar, and Bruce presses up into the caress without thought or embarrassment, as though he were a cat, willing to take whatever kind of petting he can get. Clint goes over to the couch without asking, detouring around the measurements happening in middle of the room, to pluck a cushion off of it and slide it into the space next to Tony’s customary chair.

Bruce watches Steve get measured, since it’s more or less the only thing he can see from down on the floor and when the man asks about a built in cockring, Phil merely shakes his head. “He doesn’t need it,” he says. “But I like the way this design cinches low on the hips. Can we work that into it?”

The stranger looks at the picture for a long moment, flipping back and forth between the one Coulson had been looking at before and this new one, and finally says, “It’s going to leave the straps between his thighs and the hip strap fairly short. He’s long waisted enough that I can probably put in both a waist strap and the lower hip strap if you want them, but it would be for pure aesthetics.”

“It’s mostly about aesthetics anyway,” Phil says, and Steve leans over to look at the picture the two of them are looking at and frowns down at it. “That and the ability to immobilize his hips if I want to,” Phil adds, and Steve looks at Phil with wide eyes for a long moment, and then looks away from the picture. “No opinion?” Phil asks, tipping one hand slightly under Steve’s chin to make him look up. “This is as much for how it’s going to feel for you as it is about how it’s going to look for me.”

“I don’t know enough to have an opinion,” Steve says, voice a little unsteady. “I like the way the one you picked out looks, and I don’t object to having another strap added low on my hips. I… I have to leave most of it up to you, I don’t know enough to do it any other way.”

“Trust me, I think you’ll like it for what I have in mind for it,” Phil says, and Steve nods helplessly, face still bright red, and the man takes a measurement low around Steve’s hips, nearly brushing his semi-hard cock as he does it, but very careful not to do so. “Do you need me to hold him up out of the way so you can get his thighs?” Phil asks.

“It would help,” the man says, sounding grateful, and Phil cups Steve’s cock and balls in both hands and lifts them while the man winds a measuring tape high up around each of Steve’s thighs. By the time the man is done and Phil lets his package go, Steve is more than just semi-hard.

“Come on,” Tony tells Bruce, nudging his thigh with the side of his foot. “Let’s eat while they finish up in there, unless you feel like you just have to see the rest of it.”

Bruce blushes at being caught staring, but just says, “No, Tony,” and lets Tony lead him around to the cushion, where Tony deposits two plates on the table and then bends down to hooks Bruce’s thigh cuffs to his ankle cuffs again. Bruce sighs out a brief sound of tension he hadn’t realized had been in him at all, and Tony looks knowingly down at him. “Who is the man?” Bruce murmurs, while Tony bends down in front of him with a plate full of shrimp and snowpeas and mushrooms and rice that smells fantastic.

“That’s Mike Saddler. I didn’t exactly expect them to send a novice to the tower, but I didn’t expect to see the owner either. I thought we’d get one of the partners. He does custom leather of almost any sort. He made the harness you’re wearing.” Tony tugs lightly at one of the straps over Bruce’s shoulder. “Now are you ready to eat this, or should I feed myself first.”

Bruce shuts his mouth, and lets Tony feed him, and it’s the same as it had been at breakfast, the ritual of it washing stray thoughts and curiosity out of Bruce’s mind. Clint gets up to make the tea this time when the kettle starts to whistle, and Bruce lets himself decide not to worry about whether or not Clint knows how to use a tea ball. The worst thing that happens is that he gets a subpar cup of tea, and he can live with that just for the gesture alone. He brings the tea back to the table along with the jar of honey. 

“I wasn’t sure how much he likes,” he says, and Bruce watches Clint watch Tony carefully as Tony drizzles a little splash of honey into Bruce’s tea cup. Soon they will all be able to make him tea just how he likes it, and the idea punches him in the heart in a good way. Tony feeds Bruce until Bruce turns his face away, full, and then goes to work on his own meal. Bruce waits, full and content, and eventually Tony slips the rim of the teacup against Bruce’s bottom lip and Bruce sips gratefully. Halfway through the meal, the man, Mike Saddler, comes over to talk to Tony.

“This is going to be an expensive piece,” Mike says without build up. “I’d be willing to knock a couple of grand off the price if you’ll let me put the finished product in my portfolio.”

“From the neck down,” Tony says firmly, and Mike laughs.

“Yeah, I’d have to give it away for free and people still wouldn’t believe who they were seeing in the pictures if I put his face in it. It’s going to be good on him. I’m thinking fifty-five hundred, with two grand knocked off to let me put the finished work in my portfolio. Sound fair?”

“I expected it to be more,” Tony says, sounding faintly suspicious.

Mike knocks the toe of one of his worn leather boots against the floor and says, “How often does someone get to do the leatherwork for Captain fucking America?” he asks, but he says it low, like he doesn’t want Steve to hear. “I’d do it for less, except I won’t work on anything else until I get it done and see him kitted out in it, so other things will naturally fall behind.” Mike glances down at Bruce, eyes appraising, but oddly not feeling overly familiar, in spite of Bruce’s state of undress. “Is that the one I made for you?” he asks.

“Yeah. I’m glad you talked me into the adjustable buckles on the back and front straps. Bruce is a little bigger than I am though the chest, and it wouldn’t have fit it without them.”

“Let me know if it starts looking worn in places. A lot of things I can fix if we get to the problem in time, but if you wait, you’ll need a whole new harness for him,” Mike says.

“It’s in pretty good shape right now. I might have you make something special for him at some point, but for right now, I’m comfortable with him in this one,” Tony says.

“Suits him,” is all Mike says on the matter. “Still the same card information I have on file?”

“Yeah, and give yourself a good tip for making the house call. There’s no way to get Steve into your shop without it ending up on the news somewhere,” Tony says. “How long?”

“Day after tomorrow, barring catastrophe,” Mike says, and gives Tony a grin. “If you need me for anything else, you know where to find me.”

He ambles amiably toward the elevator with his portfolio tucked under his arm, whistling under his breath something tuneful and melodic.

Tony finishes eating, pausing occasionally to give Bruce sips of his tea, and Bruce is starting to feel sleepy and sated by the time the food is gone and Steve is back into his clothes, with Phil sitting close to him on the couch and talking softly to him, clearly trying to ease him down from the experience.

The plug is sitting fairly easily inside of Bruce, mostly, Bruce thinks, because he hasn’t had to move yet, and he leans forward to rest his hip against Tony’s thigh, not quite yawning, but not far off from it either. Tony runs his fingers through Bruce’s hair absently with the hand that still has Bruce’s leash wrapped around it, which rocks Bruce’s head back a little with each motion of Tony’s hand. Tony is talking to Natasha about something, Bruce isn’t even sure what, the flogging he thinks, but he is deep enough in his own head that he can’t be bothered to focus on the conversation. He almost dozes there, head resting against Tony’s thigh, Tony’s hand stroking through his hair, and might have fallen all the way asleep except that he feels his body start to topple toward one side and jerks himself awake.

Tony pauses in his conversation with Natasha to look down curiously at him, and then smiles, gentle and warm. “Worn out already?” he asks, but kindly.

“No, just resting,” Bruce says, which he thinks is pretty much the truth. “Just down deep and dozing a little.”

Tony turns to Natasha. “I’ll talk to him about the pony whip, but you’re going to have to wait your turn. I want to fix the problem with the cross and give him a real flogging before I turn you loose on him.”

“Some subs don’t like the pony whip,” Natasha says, looking around at Bruce as she speaks now. “Have you been whipped before?”

“Yes, but not for a long time. I think I’ll do just fine with it,” Bruce says, and smiles helplessly back at her when she beams at him.

“If you think you’ll do well, I’m inclined to trust your judgement,” Natasha says. “You’re a strange combination of sweet and wise, and if you’re good for me under that whip, I’ll let you do all the other things you wanted to do to me before and couldn’t.”

Bruce’s cock jumps, reminding him of the ache of the needles still lingering in his flesh, but he says, “Tony says I should let you take me to bed and do all of those things first, and then use the whip on me last.” 

“Clint’s been talking,” Natasha says, but she sounds amused. “It’s one of his favorite things to do.”

“Clint didn’t say,” Bruce defends him quickly. “Tony just said he was there for the end of the show once, when you were teaching him how to use a pony whip.”

Natasha’s brows arch, but he merely nods. “We’ll do it whichever way seems best at the time,” she says with an easy smile. “Now go back and play with your dominant,” she orders,her smile just as easy. “I can see in your face that you’re not done for the day, but if he lets you fall asleep, you may end up being done anyway. And he still has plans for you.”

Bruce looks at Tony, who just looks down at him and gives him a single nod. “If you’re too tired, it’s nothing that can’t wait, but I still do have plans for you.”

“I’m not too tired,” Bruce says quickly, and then blushes as Natasha laughs at him.

“Wait here for a minute, I’m going to go see if I can help Coulson out with Steve,” Tony says, and hands Natasha Bruce’s leash. Bruce looks and sees Steve still sitting straight up on the couch, his body practically vibrating with agitation, with Phil still sitting close and talking to him in a soft, careful voice. Bruce can’t hear what they’re saying, but Steve is clearly upset about something.

Tony settles down on Steve’s other side, so that they are bracketing him, and Steve shifts a little toward Tony, which makes Bruce want to wince at what that instinctive turning away must have felt like to Phil. He watches as Tony talks to Steve, and Steve’s posture slowly grows easier, and he sees it when Tony redirects Steve’s attention to Phil. Steve hesitates, his face looking a little stricken, then turns back to face Phil, Tony’s hands coming to rest on his shoulders firmly. Steve hangs his head, a picture of guilt and dejection, but Phil just runs his hands along Steve’s arms for several long moments, talking to Steve in a low voice, and Steve folds forward against Phil’s chest all at once. Phil’s arms go up around him, but Tony doesn’t remove his hands from Steve’s shoulders. Bruce can almost guess what they are talking about, if not what they are actually saying. That it’s okay that Steve still needs Tony to talk him down from things, what they have isn’t as new as what Steve has with Phil, and they will both be there to help him in any way that he needs it. It lasts a little longer than that, Steve’s shoulders shaking in a way that suggests that he is crying, and then Steve slings his arms up around Phil’s neck, and Tony lets his hands fall away from his shoulders. Phil rubs small circles against Steve’s back, and Steve eventually settles against Phil, relaxed and clearly easier in his mind.

Tony crosses the room back to the kitchen and takes Bruce’s leash from Natasha, who had been watching the whole things right alongside Bruce, and bends to unhook Bruce’s ankles from his thighs and tuck the long strands up into the loops that keep them up out of the way. Bruce spins on his knees and follows Tony into the bedroom again, again feeling that slight lessening of tension he hadn’t realized he’d been feeling, though at least he can name the reason for the tension this time. Steve’s stiff body language and set expression. It’s settled now, Tony and Phil have seen to it, and if Steve needs Tony again to settle him some more, Bruce is more than willing to share, though he thinks it might actually work a little better to give Bruce a little time alone to talk to Steve. He won’t suggest it unless it seems to get worse rather than better.

He isn’t entirely certain what Steve’s problem had been, except maybe that there had been a stranger touching him intimately, which he had dealt with admirably while it had been going on, but had maybe needed comforting from afterward. Bruce isn’t sure how he’d feel about being measured for a harness by a stranger, and he isn’t Captain America, to top it all off.

Regardless of that, Bruce is excited to see what Steve will look like in a harness, and can only imagine it to be impossibly gorgeous, with his body and his sleek, golden skin.

“Do you think Steve will like the harness?” Bruce asks Tony, as Tony sheds his clothes just inside the door and urges Bruce up onto the bed with both hands.

“I think Steve is resisting the idea of how much the idea of the harness appeals to him, because he can’t quite square it in his mind yet that being made helpless gets him off. Pain, too, but for him it’s mostly the bondage. He’ll be better once he comes to terms with what he wants,” Tony says.

“He still trusts you more than he trusts Phil,” Bruce says, a little sadly.

“Phil has only has him for a few days, Bruce. I had him for months. It’s going to take him a little time to realign whom he looks to when he’s confused or upset. Were you upset that I went to take care of Steve?” Tony asks.

“No!” Bruce says quickly. “I’m glad you could do it, happy to share your attention any time Steve needs it.”

“Coulson wasn’t upset either,” Tony says. “Just glad I was there to talk Steve down when Steve couldn’t let himself be talked down by Coulson. Steve is likely to be a group effort for a little while.” He smiles faintly. “On your back, on the bed,” he says, and Bruce settles himself out in the middle of the bed with his arms and legs already splayed wide, anticipating having his wrists and ankles being made immobile. Tony chuffs out a little laugh at that, but dutifully attaches Bruce’s wrists and ankles to the bed. Bruce’s back aches dully where the harness criss-crosses between his shoulder blades, and his cock is still sore. He realizes he still has the slender plug inside of him, but since Tony hadn’t said anything about it, assumes that he still wants it there. Now that he’s lying down, the silver knob that serves as a handle for a plug is pressed against the bed, which presses the slender plug almost gently up against his prostate. If it has to be something, then Bruce guesses the little plug is the least of all evils.

“I still want to flog your cock,” Tony tells him, giving Bruce a long and serious look. “Are you up for that, or are you too sore?”

“Not too sore,” Bruce assures him, brightening a little at the idea of the small flogger across his cock, wondering if Tony will let him come after that.

“It’s becoming one of my favorite things to do to you,” Tony says, smiling a little. “Maybe because I can see all of you while I do it.”

“It’s right up there among the top of my list, too, Tony,” Bruce admits. He bites his bottom lip, hesitates, and then says, “I’d still really like to come with you touching me.”

“Which would you rather have?” Tony asks, his expression faintly sly.

Bruce squirms around on his sore back, torn, but finally says what is really in his mind. “Whichever you’d rather do.” His face heats up, but it’s true, he’s so far down that it doesn’t matter so long as Tony is getting what he wants out of it. That’s what Bruce really wants. For Tony to get what he wants.

“I want to flog your cock,” Tony says. “I want to see what it looks like on your face when you take it after you took the needles. Then we’ll see how I feel about letting you come.”

“Okay, Tony,” Bruce says, and settles himself back against the bed, only that one place on his back sore enough to make him really uncomfortable, the rest merely feeling warm and abraded, stinging at little against the sheets, but not bad. Nothing Bruce can’t enjoy.

Tony goes to the kink closet and brings out the small flogger, then climbs back up onto the bed and settles himself between Bruce’s thighs. “How does the plug feel?” Tony asks.

Bruce flushes, but says truthfully, “With the knob pressed against the bed, I can feel it pushed up against my prostate. It’s not overwhelming, but I can feel it.”

“You’ll feel it more when I flog your cock,” Tony says, a warning, but one that comes out sounding almost satisfied. Bruce nods.

“Okay, Bruce,” Tony says. “Let’s see how it feels on top of the soreness from the play piercing.”

He cocks back his arm and brings the flogger down hard across Bruce’s cock, and Bruce jerks at the abrupt pain, the reawakening of the pain left over from the needles, and also at the way that the plug inside him presses even harder against his prostate when his hips arch upward. It is so good that for a moment Bruce can’t even breathe, he’s frozen all over, unable to react, and then his breath leaves him in a rush and he groans, wanting, and Tony, looking down at him, looks pleased, his eyes dark and hot. “Faster this time than I’ve done it before,” he tells Bruce, and Bruce only nods, unable to formulate words.

Tony’s hand rises and falls, and it is faster, much faster, and every blow seems to ring through Bruce’s whole body, awakening the pain on the back of his body as much as it awakens the pain from the needles and presses the little plug harder and harder against his prostate. Tony’s arm is a blur as he flogs Bruce’s cock, and Bruce arches up into it, groaning in pain and the pleasure of the plug inside him, and at the tingling pain across the back of his body, and at the feel of the flogger against the thin skin of his cock, the braided strands piercing and the little metal barbs catching at his flesh, and Bruce takes it for as long as he can, takes it until he feels like his mind is totally outside of his control, and then he begs, “Please, Tony, I want to come, I need to, please, touch me, just your hands.” 

Tony almost immediately drops the flogger and takes Bruce’s cock in his right hand and begins stroking him hard and fast, but the cockring attached to the harness is still in place, and the pain of Tony’s hand wrapped around his sore cock sends Bruce’s mind soaring, almost feeling like it’s tearing away, and he can hear himself pleading incoherently, though his tears are just pain reactions, not desperation tears, not yet, and he can feel himself rocking up into Tony’s fist, even though each time he comes back down the plug presses against at his prostate, which is beginning to feel a little bruised or something more than that, like it’s swollen, so that the little plug strokes across more and more of it every time.

“Bruce,” Tony says, voice gentle. “You don’t know how you look when you’re like this, I’m going to have to show you on one of the feeds what it’s like to get to see you like this. Nothing gets me off like making you needy for me like this, not even hurting you gets me off quite as much as hearing you beg like you don’t even know what you’re saying. Just a little longer, I promise, just hold on for me a little longer,” Tony murmurs, and Bruce hitches in a breath and holds it long enough to get enough control over his voice to answer.

“As long as you want to, Tony, I’m yours, I will take whatever you give me,” and it comes out a jumbled sort of sprawl of sound, but Bruce is almost sure that Tony understands what he had said because Tony’s smile widens, and the look on his face gets both hotter and gentler, an amazing dichotomy, and Bruce let’s himself let go of thinking about it and just lets Tony’s hand around his sore cock and the plug and the pain of his back work through his body, and Tony seems to sense it, recognize it, when the tears are no longer pain tears, but desperation tears, because he only goes on another minute, his face intense, his eyes intent on Bruce’s face, before he unsnaps the cockring around the harness and Bruce wails out a sound of pleasure and gratitude as his balls tighten and his cock jerks in Tony’s hard fist, and he comes hard, so hard it feels like his mind snaps abruptly back into his body so that it doesn’t miss it, and Bruce shoots across his belly and the backs of Tony fingers and almost all the way up to the lower strap of the harness around his chest. 

He goes limp after, satiated and disconnected, and feels Tony’s mouth on him, cleaning up his come, shivers at the feel of it and revels in the perfect freedom of his subspace, the perfect lack of worry or pain or fear, the total relaxation and the tidal pull of submission that rolls his mind and trembles through his body.

He isn’t sure how long he lies there, only that Tony is there with him, kissing him and touching him everywhere, his calloused hands sending shivers of pleasure across every inch of skin that they touch, and only slowly does he realize that Tony is talking to him, saying, “You’re perfect, I knew while I was waiting all that time, I knew you were worth waiting for, worth all the frustration and the want, but I didn’t know how perfect you were really going to be. I’ve never had anyone like you, never even imagined there could be someone like you for me, and I’m so grateful that you took my collar, Bruce, thank you for being mine, thank you for giving yourself over to me the way that you do, thank you for being exactly what I need you to be. I should be able to say it better, I should be able to really explain what your submission means to me, how much I crave it and how much I love it when you give it to me, but I don’t have better words, I just have these, and I hope these are going to be enough.”

“You took me out of nothing, Tony,” Bruce husks out. “I had nothing, hadn’t had anything in so long, and you gave me everything I wanted and some things I didn’t even know how to want. I want to be perfect for you, it makes me feel whole to give myself to you like this, and that you saw what I was and wanted me enough to wait for me to be able to accept it from you makes me luckier than I can even explain. I was empty, and now I have you, and that would have been enough for me, but I also have the rest of the team, and Tony, I’ve never been so content, I’ve never been so safe, I’ve never _felt_ so needed, and I need to be needed like that. I love you, and I want you, every part of you, and I am the lucky one, I am the one that finally got… got filled up with you. You’re perfect for me, and hearing you tell me that I’m perfect for you makes everything right in my world, everything that was wrong with it just a memory that I can put away and never think of again. Thank you, Tony.”

Tony leans up and kisses him, so hard at first that it’s almost bruising and Bruce is amazed to feel his cock beginning to stir at the feel of those kisses, but they settle then, into long and fervent explorations of lips and teeth and tongues, and then Tony is pressing kisses to his cheekbones and his temples and along the line of his jaw. “I love you Bruce,” he murmurs, his lips hovering less than an inch away from Bruce’s lips. “I love you and I need you to be mine.”

“I am yours, Tony,” Bruce says, and tips his head up to close that scant distance between their lips, just a soft brush of his lips against Tony’s. “I am, and I’m so lucky sometimes I wake up and I can’t believe it.”

“I wake up that way, too,” Tony tells him. “Every morning that I wake up with you in my bed feels like winning the submissive lottery.”

Bruce chuckles a little, and Tony’s lips quirk into a soft smile. 

“But I’m serious about you watching the feed, watching your face when you go under for me. I can’t put into words how good that is for me, seeing you do it, so I can only show you what it looks like and hope that you understand when you see it.” Tony runs a hand through Bruce’s hair. “Was it what you wanted?” Tony asks.

“Was what what I wanted?” Bruce replies, puzzled. 

“Your day of bondage. It’s not quite over yet, but I can feel you drifting away, and I want to make sure you got what you wanted from it before you accidentally fall asleep,” Tony says.

“It was better than I wanted,” Bruce says. “Better than I knew how to expect. Something I’ve never had before, and didn’t know I wanted before you. I’m not going to fall asleep.”

“Good, because I want you to come for me at least once more, and I want to fuck your mouth in the fairly near future,” Tony says wryly. “But I can tell you’re winding down, and we don’t have to do anything else today if you need to just lie back and let your subspace take you under.”

“I want to do what you want,” Bruce says truthfully.

“How does your cock feel?” Tony asks.

“Sore and wonderful,” Bruce says, feeling his face heat a little at the admission, but unable to let it bother him that much.

“Too sore to come again?” Tony asks.

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so, Tony,” Bruce says. “But that may just be because I want to come again.”

Tony reaches up and unhooks the wrist cuffs from the head of the bed, and then gets up onto his knees to reach down for the ankle cuffs. He urges Bruce up onto his knees, which Bruce manages with only a little swimmy headedness, and begins piling pillows up into the middle of the bed. He retrieves the ones from the floor and adds them to the pile, and then gestures toward the pile. “On your back, with your head hanging back off of the pile,” he says.

Bruce remembers sucking Tony’s cock this way, though it’s been days, and his cock stirs a little more at the idea of getting to do it again. He settles himself back across the mound of pillows, his head hanging upside down off the top of the pile, and Tony tugs him up slightly and wedges a couple of the pillow directly under his shoulders. 

“Feel steady?” Tony asks.

“I think so,” Bruce says, shifting a little and finding himself supported fairly securely by the pile of pillows.

Tony slides between the headboard and Bruce’s face, so that Bruce can see him upside down, his cock long and hard and already leaking a little at the tip. “Open,” Tony says, and Bruce’s belly knots in desire at the order, and he opens his mouth and watches as Tony presses down at the base of his cock to lower the angle enough to get it lined up with Bruce’s open mouth. Bruce’s mouth waters, and he’s very aware of the smell of sex on both of them, but especially on Tony, musk and come and sweat, as he presses the head of his cock between Bruce’s lips and then eases forward, more, Bruce thinks, to check the structural integrity of the pile of pillows than out of any consideration for Bruce. Not that Bruce especially wants that kind of consideration. Once Tony seems certain that the pillows are going to hold Bruce where he wants, he draws back and then presses in deep, not quite all the way, but a long, heavy stroke that pins Bruce’s tongue down with the weight of it. Bruce closes his lips around the shaft and sucks as well as he can, considering the angle and the depth of Tony’s stroke, but Tony pulls back before Bruce can do much and pushes in again, deeper, hard enough to bump the head of his cock against the back of Bruce’s throat, making his let out a little choking sound. Then Tony pulls back again, leaning slightly forward to brace a hand against Bruce’s chest, and the pushes back in, all the way this time, so that the head of his cock presses back past Bruce’s gag reflex and cuts off his air at almost the same time. Tony groans, one hand buried in Bruce’s hair while the other is braced on his chest, and works his cock deeper into Bruce’s throat until he’s buried as deeply as he can go, and then rocks his hips almost gently, as though to give Bruce time to to get used to the feel of his cock stretching out the passage of his throat, but more, Bruce thinks, to keep Bruce’s air cut off for as long as he can. Tony’s cock had looked primed and ready to come, already dripping precome from the tip, and Bruce is fully aware that Tony likes to make him choke on it until Bruce comes close to passing out. Tony’s hips begin to rock a little faster, and Bruce’s cock hardens further at the feel of having his throat used by Tony, the way that Tony likes it best, and he would moan in encouragement if he had any air to moan with. As it is, all he can really do is hold still and let Tony have his way with Bruce’s mouth and throat, and that’s okay with Bruce. Tony’s hips work steadily as he thrusts shallowly into Bruce’s throat, and it goes on for maybe three minutes, long enough for Bruce’s vision to start to go a little gray around the edges and for his head to feel swimmy with lack of oxygen, and then Tony is pressing in harder and deeper, his cock tugging at the tender skin of the inside of Bruce’s throat, but Bruce can feel Tony’s hips start to fall out of the rhythm he’d established, and knows that he’s close. Bruce is all the way hard now, his lungs crying out for air, and Tony presses inside as far as he can go for several long, endless seconds in which Bruce’s need for breath starts to tilt toward a kind of hazy idea that breathing isn’t that important anyway, and then Tony is shooting down his throat, Bruce can feel his cock jerking in his mouth and throat, but he doesn’t pull back right away, leaves his cock buried in Bruce’s throat until black spots are blooming in front of Bruce’s eyes, and then it isn’t so much that Bruce pulls out as that he softens enough that Bruce’s airway is suddenly open, and he sucks in a huge breath that stings like ice going down. Almost at the same time that Bruce draws a breath, Tony’s hand slides down from his chest to wrap around his cock, and Bruce is coming before he realizes he had even been close, and he remembers that a little, from the first time, too, that Tony had made him come just by letting him breathe. Bruce’s body shudders, Tony’s hand is hard around his sore cock, but he lets Bruce go almost as soon as the orgasm has been wrung from him.

Bruce’s cock aches, and he’s still dizzy from lack of oxygen when Tony slips down to lie beside him, hands stroking across the front of Bruce’s body as though to ease him through the orgasm. Bruce shivers under his hands and lets himself be soothed, though in truth he is so deeply in his subspace that he hardly need soothing. Still, Tony’s hands feel good on his body, and he has no desire to try to stop him.

“How close to passing out?” Tony asks.

“I was seeing black spots and thinking that breathing wasn’t really that important,” Bruce says, his voice hoarse. “Do you want me to pass out?” It isn’t a question that has occurred to Bruce to wonder before.

“No,” Tony says. “I just want to get you as close to the edge of it as I can without sending you over it. You go soft all over, your throat loosens up, if you’re upright, you start to sway or slump over to one side. I like those things. It’s a power trip, I’m aware, but that doesn’t make me want it less.”

“I like it,” Bruce says. “It’s a struggle, but a good struggle, and then things go swimmy in my head and I start to feel very calm and dizzy and I get hard, even if I wasn’t before.”

“That’s actually a pretty common reaction for people that like erotic asphyxiation,” Tony says. “For them to get hard fast, even if they didn’t start out that way. I was watching it happening to you while I had your throat, and I was pretty sure I could make your come when I first let you breathe, if I timed it right.”

“Well, good job, then,” Bruce says a little wryly.

“The timing has to be right,” Tony says. “Either just before you let your partner get a breath, or just after. It depends on your partner.” He turns to kiss Bruce’s jaw. “How does your cock feel?”

“Sore and wonderful, still,” Bruce reports. “I’m thirsty, Tony.”

Tony gets up and throws on some clothes without comment and leaves the bedroom. He come back with a bottle of Gold Machine, and helps Bruce to sit up so that he can drink it.

“How is your back?” Tony asks.

“Not bad. It’s sorest in the middle, where you had your hand, and where the harness straps cross over it, but even so, it’s not that sore. Something that will mostly work itself out by tomorrow, I think.” Tony takes away his bottle of juice only half-drunk, and gestures for Bruce to get up on his knees. Bruce does, a little puzzled, and then feels Tony tug the slender plug out of him, a little more painfully than it had gone in. He settles back down to sit tailor fashion on the bed, and Tony hands him his juice back. “Thank you,” Bruce says, and Tony waves it away as he sets the plug on the table next to the other one that needs to be sanitized.

“Are you hungry at all? We ate so late, that I don’t really feel the need to eat again,” Tony says.

“No,” Bruce agrees. His limbs feel heavy and his mind is a slow moving blur.

“Let’s get the harness off of you so we can get you in the shower before you fall over asleep,” Tony says, smiling a little.

Bruce opens his mouth to object that he isn’t going to fall over asleep when he realizes that Tony has had to take the bottle of juice from his hands, still about halfway full, probably because Bruce’s hands had been unsteady around it. Tony caps it and sets it on the bedside table.

“Up on your feet,” Tony says, and Bruce draggingly obeys, abruptly completely wiped out, nearly asleep on his feet. His subspace is still strong enough to keep him on his feet while Tony removes the harness from him, setting it carefully aside, and is even enough to let Tony take him into the shower, where he leans heavily against the wall and lets Tony take care of washing him. Tony dries him thoroughly with one of his big fluffy towels, and then leads Bruce, stumbling with weariness, back to the bed. “Do you want to be bound down?” Tony asks.

Bruce nods, too tired to talk, and lets Tony maneuver him into bed and get his hands and feet cuffed to the bed.

“Thank you, Tony,” Bruce manages to say, and then lets out a jaw cracking yawn that makes Tony smile.

“You’re welcome, Bruce,” he says gently, and pulls the comforter up over him. “I’m going out into the penthouse for a while. It’s still a little early for me to sleep. Will you be okay in here without me?”

“I’m already almost asleep,” Bruce mumbles, and hears Tony chuckle, and then he stretches out so that he can feel the prickling sensation left over from the flogger across his back against the sheets, and he falls asleep with the thought that the flogger will be even better next time.


End file.
